With the Spring Championships of Online Poker currently underway, PokerStars have good news for those that can’t compete. PlaySCOOP is also underway with over 40 different tournaments, and millions in play money dollars on hand.
The Spring Championships of Online Poker (SCOOP) is amongst us. Poker players from all over the world are having kittens as the prospect of taking their chunk of the $40 million in guarantees suddenly hits home.
PokerStars Team Online member, Mickey ‘mement_mori’ Petersen, is a little more excited than most.
Poker Christmas is finally here! Only thing that could possibly rival it was unpacking this in 1998. GL all! #SCOOP pic.twitter.com/DNFZmDylxm
— Mickey Petersen (@mickeydp) May 10, 2015
For the next 14-days, players will compete in 138 online tournaments. What makes SCOOP so accessible is the three-tier structure (Low/Mid/High) that allows players to compete at three separate buy-in levels. The actual buy-in varies, but you are looking at $27/$109/$1,050 on most occasions.
Unfortunately, not everyone will be allowed to play. The governments of select countries believing that playing online poker is a tributary for terrorism, amongst other outrageous claims.
If you have enough money at your disposal, then you can leave said country and find one with some normal rules and regulations. PokerStars Team Pro, Jason Mercier, tweeting that he can’t remember the last time he was multi-tabling, for example.
But not everyone has that kind of money.
What about the other poor bastards?
Fortunately, PokerStars thinks everyone is important come SCOOP time. And that’s why they have created PlaySCOOP. Or as Kevin Mathers has christened it: PLOOP.
PLOOP will operate during the same timeframe as SCOOP. There will be over 40 different events, in every imaginable poker derivative you can think of, and there will be millions of play money dollars in guarantees.
Last years Main Event winner (which will cost you 1 million play money dollars to enter), zvjerka1, walked away with 204,000,000 play money chips. That a lot of play money.
People play poker for play money.
Are you serious?
Well, yes…and…yes.
At the back end of March, viziato1991, MoXpade, and the former WSOP Champion Chris ‘Money800’ Moneymaker, competed in the single largest Play Money pot in history.
Viziato1991 opened the button to 40m, MoXpade raised to 140m, from the small blind, Moneymaker folded his [5h] [2s], in the big blind, and viziato1991 made the call.
The flop was [Js] [Td] [8s], MoXpade led for 193m, and his opponent made the call. The turn was the [7d] and both players checked. The river was the [9s], MoXpade led for 677m, viziato1991 moved all-in for 3 billion, and MoXpade made the call (with 2.2m behind).
MoXpade showed [Ac] [Qs] for the straight, and viziato1991 turned over [6s] [4s] for the flush. The total pot size was 6.47 billion chips. The Italian viziato1991 likes to play for big play money stakes, after being involved in half of the biggest pots ever played.
PLOOP is currently underway at PokerStars, and the full schedule can be found here. Just make sure you spell the thing properly when tweeting.
