The Scoop on the PokerStars SCOOP Poker Tournament Series

Now this is an interesting tournament series. Do you only have $5.50 in your account? No worries, you still can buy directly into an event. On the other hand, if you have a spare $25,000 in your bankroll with nowhere to go, this tournament series has a game for you, as well. In case you haven’t already guessed it, the tournament series in question is the inaugural Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), which is set to kick off very soon on PokerStars.

The SCOOP will run from April 2-12 and features 66 tournaments across 22 events. Those tournaments are part of a three-tiered set of events with low-, medium-, and high-stakes buy-ins. For instance, event No. 1 — a six-handed no-limit hold’em tournament to be held April 2 — has three versions: low stakes with a $5.50 buy-in and $50,000 guarantee; medium stakes with a $55 buy-in and $200,000 guarantee; and high stakes with a $530 buy-in and $500,000 guarantee. To avoid the tournament cannibalism that may result from having three different versions of the same event on the same day, the PokerStars tournament team is working on a SCOOP leader-board promotion to encourage players to play in as many tournaments as they can across all stakes. (The details of the SCOOP leader-board promotion have yet to be released.)

The full schedule of events can be found in the CardPlayer.com SCOOP preview story.

Card Player wanted to get to the bottom of how this unique tournament series was conceived, what players can expect during the SCOOP, and what other surprises are in store. And who’s the best person to talk to about this behemoth of a tournament series? Why, the omnipresent Tournaments Team Leader StaffBryanS, of course, part of the PokerStars poker room management team. StaffBryanS is a name you might recognize if you’ve ever railed the final table of the PokerStars Sunday Million (or been lucky enough to actually be seated at that table). Bryan was available to answer all of our questions about the upcoming landmark tournament series.


Shawn Patrick Green: How did the idea for the buy-in tiers come up, and what’s the overall goal of that format?

Bryan S.: In the first draft of the schedule, the SCOOP was drawn up as a series which was similar to the WCOOP, but with the buy-ins a bit smaller, the series a bit more accessible to more players than a WCOOP event would be, and so on. As we were planning, there was a school of thought in the company which said that we should offer something more tightly focused on the high-stakes players. There was also talk of eventually offering a low-stakes version, something we drew up for August 2008 but which never made it to the site. Debate went back and forth for quite a while, with us even asking the players of TwoPlusTwo’s MTTc forum to join in with their comments.

During one session, and eventually in an e-mail thread, I suggested that we could do something a bit unusual and end the debate by offering something for everyone. The first time I wrote about it, I called it the Triple Choice … which didn’t stick, obviously.

Throughout the discussions, a wide variety of people throughout PokerStars contributed with ideas, comments, and so on. A major strength we enjoy, in my opinion, is the ability to draw on the wisdom and insight of people from all over the company. With the SCOOP, the discussions resolved themselves with us having something unprecedented: the all-stakes format that has many people (including us) very, very excited.

SPG: If I have $100 or less on the site, what’s the best way for me to get into some of the bigger high-roller events, like the $3,150 two-day no-limit hold’em event ($3 million guaranteed), or huge ones like the $25,500 heads-up event ($800,000 guaranteed) or the $10,300 main event ($5 million guaranteed)? Is there any hope?

BS: There’s always hope! Get on the Steps. That $100 will get you at least 13 Step 1 entries. From there, you can advance up the Steps until you reach Step 5, at which point you can compete with 10 others for two seats to event No. 8 (the $3,150 two-day no-limit hold’em event). Even if you don’t win the seat right then but finish in third, you’ll get $400, and then you’ve got four times the amount you started with and can go at it all over again. To reach the $10,300 main event, you’ll need to go to a Step 6 and win it. We have other satellites, of course, but the best way with $100 to reach those two is via the Steps, I think. As for the $25,500 no-limit hold’em heads-up tourney, we haven’t yet put any satellites out for it. We probably will, but the satellites for it will necessarily be quite expensive, themselves.

SPG: What are you most excited about with this series?

BS: My favorite thing about working on PokerStars tournaments is watching players enjoying themselves, particularly in something special, something they can’t find anywhere but on our site. The SCOOP is shaping up to be one of those types of things in a very big way. I’m excited to see the everyday low-stakes players getting an opportunity to be greeted by one of us at a final table and congratulated for their success in an event they’d never dreamed we’d have for their buy-in level, and enjoying the spotlight a bit.

SPG: What lessons did you take into consideration from previous runs of the WCOOP when conceptualizing the SCOOP to ensure that it would fit most players’ wants and needs?

BS: One thing we have heard often is that some of the events haven’t been as accessible as they could have been to all of the players who’d like to participate in them. With a WCOOP, sometimes we just can’t do anything about that, as the nature of the series is such that the buy-ins need to be at a certain level to build the kind of championship events we’re looking to host. We do, of course, try to provide as many opportunities as possible — at loads of buy-in levels — for all players to reach any event via satellites.

For the 2009 SCOOP — as we have done in the past and most recently for the 2008 WCOOP — we have involved the players in the discussion in a big way … either directly on forums such as TwoPlusTwo, or indirectly by posting trial tournaments and asking within the lobbies that the players e-mail us with feedback regarding the structure, and so on. Building a series with our players gives us the ability to tailor it as much as possible to a format which meets their expectations. We can’t make everyone happy, of course … no event is set up in a way that 100 percent of the players are satisfied with it.

SPG: Which features of the SCOOP are likely to be carried over to September’s WCOOP if they’re successful?

BS: This is a tough question, as the SCOOP and the WCOOP are related in terms of being major events which we host, but their direct relationship is loose, aside from their names. I don’t think it’s likely that the all-stakes format will translate to the WCOOP, but it’s early to make that determination … we will have to play that one by ear.

For each of the SCOOP events this year, we have introduced a parameter called “FastDealing,” which puts the players’ cards out a little bit faster and cuts down the time to act by five seconds (from 25 seconds to 20 seconds). It doesn’t seem like much, and it really isn’t in one individual hand, but over the course of an entire tournament, it allows for more hands per level, while at the same time reducing the overall length of each individual tournament. I could see this parameter being introduced into the WCOOP events for 2009.

SPG: Despite the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), online poker has been continuously growing, and the addition of the SCOOP to the PokerStars schedule is just one of many indications of that. What do you think is the likelihood of the UIGEA being overturned in the U.S., and in what ways will that affect the industry?

BS: First, there is a misconception that the UIGEA changed anything legally. In fact, what the UIGEA did was to prohibit banks to transfer money from players to illegal online sites. The UIGEA didn’t define what makes a site illegal and relied on the previous laws for that. I believe that offering people the ability to play a game of skill between themselves on Internet wasn’t illegal before the UIGEA and isn’t illegal now. Poker is a game of skill … certainly more so than selecting a winning racehorse.

However, as banks don’t want to invest a lot of efforts to distinguish between what’s legal and what’s illegal, they tend to over-block everything, and in that way the UIGEA did impact the ability of Americans to play poker on Internet. I think that the UIGEA is likely to be replaced by licensing and regulation, which will make it better for both players and the government.

As for any impact on the industry, I really can’t say I feel comfortable speculating, except to say that I feel secure that explicit legalization would be good for us as the undisputed industry leader. We will certainly face some new competition, but we relish that … it keeps us on our toes and gives us extra incentive to keep offering the best poker in the world, online or offline.

SPG: Finally, can you give Card Player readers an inside track on what might be on the horizon for poker tournaments on PokerStars?

BS: Hmm … no [grins]. I can tell you that I’m proud to lead a group of highly-talented people on our tournaments team and to be part of the poker-room-management team overall. It’s energizing to work in such a place, where we’re always focusing on ways we can make things just a little bit better today than they were yesterday … whether that mindset applies to client development, new tournaments, new series, new games, or whatever else.


StaffBryanS can be found at the final table of the Sunday Million into the early hours most weekends.

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