The 2016 Spring Championship of Online Poker is nearly here and you can sweat the stars on BetStars
The 2016 SCOOP is set to give PokerStars the chance to put its bad start to the year behind it and concentrate on what it does best. The huge online festival is offering nine more events than last year, running across three different buy-in levels to give a total of 165 tournaments. It runs May 8-22 with a total guaranteed prize pool of over $40m.
This year you don’t even have to play yourself to make a profit. PokerStars has introduced a dedicated SCOOP 2016 Team PokerStars Leaderboard, with BetStars offering odds on the winner. Over 30 PokerStars pros are taking part but there are a couple of names worth looking at closely. Jason Mercier – last year’s Player of the Series – is the favourite at 5/1, with George Danzer, the player with the most all-time SCOOP cashes, closely behind at 7/1. Interestingly these two have a $10k ‘finish higher’ side bet, which means they’ll be playing as many events as possible.
Mercier said: ‘Last year was amazing, winning the three titles and Player of the Year… I’ll play as many events as I can and whether it’s a $200 event or a $20,000 one, I’m always focused on finishing first. The addition of the Team PokerStars leaderboard, the $10k side bet with George, and earning bragging rights over some of my best poker friends, will be an extra incentive to take the top spot.’
If you’d rather stake a bid for the top of the leaderboard yourself, online qualifiers are running on PokerStars now for all the events, with satellites starting at just $0.11 or one Stars Coin. Keep an eye out for special Spin & Gos too which will award Main Event tickets as jackpot prizes.
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