One More Huge SCOOP

The 2014 Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) at PokerStars finishes up tonight with the completion of the last two-day events on the 135-tournament schedule. There were a lot of two-day tourneys this time -- 51 of them, in fact -- to accommodate the ever-swelling fields.

The guarantees added up to $40 million for all 135 tourneys, and were bested in each and every one of them. In fact, the total of all the prize pools ended up surging way, way past that mark to total $81,222,158.66, a SCOOP record.

The “High” version of the $10,300 Main Event also bested the previous all-time high, drawing 657 entrants, better than the 615 who played the same event in 2010, the last pre-Black Friday SCOOP.

I’ve written posts occasionally over the last three-plus years remarking on the recovery of PokerStars following the site’s losing the ability to accept players from the U.S. In May 2012 I was already remarking on how the SCOOP series as a whole had gotten back to the 2010 totals after a one-year dip, and of course now it is bigger than ever.

Both the SCOOP and the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) in the fall pretty clearly now rate as not just the most important tournament series when it comes to online play, but also among the most significant poker events overall, challenging the biggest live tourneys and series of the year, too.

Hard to imagine how much bigger it would all be with the U.S. involved, too.