Struck a deal at the end
Belarusian poker player “Alexgirs” won the 2020 PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) $10,300 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event and $920,596.81, the largest prize of the entire series. The tournament was the “high” buy-in Main Event, the most prestigious of the poker festival. “HayashiJoão” from Brazil won the $1,050 “medium” Main Event, while “auercan” from Latvia won the $109 “low” tier.
The final prize pool of $6.09m demolished the guarantee by 20%.
There were 415 initial entries and 194 re-entries for the flagship SCOOP Main Event. The final prize pool of $6.09m demolished the guarantee by 20%.
The original first place prize was $1,062,966.47, but the final three players arranged a deal in which Alexgirs took less money while locking up the top payout. Brazilian player “pabritz” took $764,941.51 and finished second, making just less than the original $776,869.63 second place figure. “dynoalot” from Canada arguably got the best end of it, finishing third and winning $722,074.96. Third place would have been $567,776.18 without a deal. They left $50,000 on the table to give the players an incentive to keep trying.
SCOOP isn’t done just yet
The 2020 SCOOP was supposed to be over by now, but because the response has been so strong thanks, in part, to people staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic, PokerStars extended the series through May.
Seven of the new tournaments have guarantees of at least $1m.
Last week, the poker room announced that it was adding 132 tournaments to the schedule and another $50m in guaranteed prize pools, bringing the total to $135m. Seven of the new tournaments have guarantees of at least $1m.
SCOOP now holds the record for the most total guaranteed prizes in online poker history. The previous record was held by the WSOP Super Circuit Online Series on GGPoker, which is also running through the end of this month. GGPoker’s collaboration with the World Series of Poker was announced at approximately the same time as the 2020 SCOOP schedule. Two weeks later, GGPoker unveiled a monstrous 595 event schedule with a then-chart-topping $100m in guarantees.
Live streaming history is made
One of the highlights of the 2020 SCOOP $10,300 Main Event was the concurrent deep runs by PokerStars Ambassadors Lex Veldhuis and Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg. The two friends are popular poker streamers, so they naturally streamed their play live on Twitch.
The two even ended up at the same table, with Veldhuis eliminating his friend in 30th place.
“You’re such a champ mate. Thank you so much and that’s the worst I’ve ever felt winning a hand,” tweeted Veldhuis.
Far from a sore loser, Spragg told his followers to “raid” Veldhuis’s channel to cheer him on. Veldhuis’s stream was flooded with the 17,000 viewers who had been watching Spragg’s channel. That helped Veldhuis max out at 58,799 simultaneous viewers, which set the all-time record for a poker stream on Twitch. He finished in 15th place.
“I think words fall short of what tonight’s session was,” Veldhuis told the PokerStars blog. “I broke the world record for the number of viewers for Twitch Poker with 58,799. I live in a town with only 48,000 or so people who live here. That’s crazy.”