Big Bounty Rewards in the PokerStars SCOOP Series
Anyone who’s had even a passing interest in real money online poker over the years is aware of the extremely popular PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) series. The latest edition, which continues until the end of May, is awash with tens of millions in prize money, as well as the extra prizes in the form of bounties that the relatively new Bounty Tournament format produces (see below).
Here’s the latest from this exciting online poker tournament smorgasbord...
Two wins in a day
Winning anything is an achievement. Winning a SCOOP event is impressive. Winning two events is newsworthy. Winning two events on the same day is other-worldly! Yet this is exactly what Niklas “Lena900” Astedt managed to do earlier this week. First, he bagged the 508-entry, $530 buy-in Sunday Kick-off PKO (#73-H) to win $42,611, including $22,974 in bounties. Then, remarkably, he followed this up by winning another title in the form of the 433-entry $215 buy-in NLO8 6-max PKO (#76-M), collecting $16,022 (including $9,387 in bounties). This astounding feat takes the ultra-talented Swede’s SCOOP tally to a rather greedy eight, alongside Benny “RunGodlike” Glaser, Ole “wizowizo” Schemion and “Premove” - they need two more to catch Calvin “cal42688” Anderson, however.
Another Victory for PADS
Patrick “pads1161” Leonard took down the $5,200 buy-in Titans PKO (#75-H) for a cool $197,117. What’s interesting about this is that $71,023 of this was first place, while $126,094 was earned in bounties! This is Leonard’s seventh SCOOP title (after first winning in 2017 and managing at least one each year since 2020!), and the win catapulted him to first place on the High SCOOP Leaderboard.
The Joy of Bounties
It’s a sign of the times - and a justification in online poker operators offering the masses plenty of PKO tournaments - that Montenegro’s “Premove” also gave us an odd statistic. When he won the $2,100 buy-in NLO8 6-max PKO (#76-H), he trousered $61,970 - this was made up of $18,798 for first place, and $43,172 (more than double!) in bounties. Note that this was “Premove”s eighth SCOOP title (and the second of the year).
