If a “first-ever” of a tournament wasn’t historic enough, then perhaps the fact that it provided over €12.3 million in pay-outs will top it.
The Southern European Championship of Online Poker (SECOOP) took place via the Pokerstars platform and finished its run on November 12. Across the 149 events, the €12.3 million in prize money saw itself handed out to multiple winners. And with a guarantee for the tournament of €10 million, it’s safe to say that it more than outdid itself.
Over 38,000 poker players joined in with the fun across the shared liquidity network across Europe, which currently features gamers from France, Spain and Portugal.
The Main Event of the tournament had its own guarantee of €1 million in winnings, and this was surpassed by a total of €212,487 when 5,215 players entered. The winner of the Main Event was a French gamer, going by the username of “Befuddeld”. He went on to claim the first-place prize of €172,451.
Figures suggest that France was the country that had the most participants, followed by Spain and finally, Portugal.
Additional Tournament Features
While the fact that SECOOP far-exceeded its guarantee, there were certain other standout moments that took place. The largest €50 Warm Up and €10 Classico events were held on the network, bringing together prize pools of €237,375 for the former and €149,382 for the latter.
It was another French player who took home the first-place reward of €32,126 for the Warm Up, while Spanish player “tecnicu” secured the €16,124 for the first-place finish of the Classico.
The SECOOP stands as the latest tournament series that Pokerstars has chosen to offer, with multiple others having been available previously on the European network. These have included tournament such as the France Espania Hold’em (FRESH), TRIO series and the France and Spain SCOOP. Since the European shared-liquidity network was launched, the Pokerstars platform has provided players with over €50 million from its various prize pools.
Speaking of the success of the events across Europe, the Director of Poker Innovation and Operations for The Stars Group, Severin Rasset said that it’s one of the most poplar series. He went on to state that even though a number of new series have been launched via Pokerstars, the support from players in Southern Europe has been amazing.
The only country left to join the shared-liquidity network is Italy. And although players from this country couldn’t participate in this year’s SECOOP, there was something in line for them. The 10th series of the Italian Championship of Online Poker (ICOOP) ran simultaneously with the new SECOOP event instead. There was a €4 million guarantee for this, although this also outdid itself with a prize pool of €4,942,126.
The player known as “SmartTrave” was one of the bigger winners from this tournament, claiming a total of €56,000 in the Main Event.
