The Stars Group Inc. – the parent company behind the popular poker room PokerStars – made an announcement yesterday that its Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) tournament went above and beyond its own guaranteed prize pool of $65 million. Far above and beyond it would seem, as the tournament ended up paying out around $91 million in rewards. This figure makes the 2018 SCOOP the second largest to have ever taken place, only a few million behind last year’s SCOOP event.
The PokerStars event this year ran between May 6 and May 23, existing across 16 days and incorporating 183 different tournaments. A total of 28 of these tournaments each brought a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million with them. SCOOP continued this year, marking its tenth year of operation and bringing in 141,862 players. These players participated from within 141 countries around the world, making up 1,071,706 tournament entries altogether. The SCOOP event had tournament buy-ins that ranged in price from as little as $2.20 and upwards to $25,000.
The Chief Executive of The Stars Group, Rafi Ashkenazi said that the SCOOP event is one of the online poker world’s “most important highlights”. He went on to state that his company was not only pleased to offer up the largest online poker guarantee in the history of PokerStars, but to also exceed this and pay out above £90 million in rewards to the site’s players.
More About the 2018 SCOOP Event and The Stars Group
Five prestigious rewards were on offer during the SCOOP event of 2018, existing as the Platinum Passes to the PokerStars Players No Limit Hold’em Championship (PSPC). These are each worth about $30,000 altogether, with three of them going to the Main Event winners from each of the different buy-in levels. The fourth was awarded to the player who topped the SCOOP leader board, while the fifth was won by the player who was the victor of an ‘All-In Shootout’ draw. These five players will now be able to attend the PSPC, taking place in 2019 in the Bahamas.
The Stars Group has been in existence for many years now, operating several online brands like the aforementioned PokerStars, BetStars, PokerStars Casino and Full Tilt. Additionally, it has been responsible for various online tournaments, including both the ones spoken of above (SCOOP, PSPC) and others, like the European Poker Tour. Through the various platforms that The Stars Group owns and the multiple tournaments that it hosts every year, The Stars Group has risen to become one of the biggest companies in the gambling world. Not only that, but several of its platforms have also risen to lofty heights, especially the PokerStars poker room platform itself. This ranks as the top poker site, having platforms catering to various country markets around the world, including being a part of the European shared-liquidity network running throughout Portugal, Spain and France.
