PokerStars has set a new record for the largest ever online poker tournament series. This year’s Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP 2012) ran for two weeks, featuring 40 events of three tournaments each for a total of 120 events. Registration for the last event has just closed, resulting in a grand total of $65,332,179 worth of prizes for the series. There were a grand total of 526,154 entries, also a new record.

The previous records were set by PokerStars’ SCOOP 2010 when 461,936 entrants played for a total of $64,230,010 in prize money. It should be noted that SCOOP 2010 only had 33 different events, compared to this year’s 40 events.

Despite the larger number of events, this new record is impressive since it comes just one year after Black Friday and the forced exit of US players from PokerStars and other online poker sites. It is estimated that PokerStars lost nearly one third of their traffic when the US market was locked out by the US Department of Justice. This new record shows that international online poker is still thriving. Participants in this year’s SCOOP 2012 came from all over the world; over 150 different countries were represented.

Buy ins for SCOOP 2012 ranged from $5.50 to the $10,300 high roller main event. All series long the large guaranteed prize pool amounts were 먹튀검증사이트 being exceeded with ease. In some tournaments the prize pool ended up being triple or even four times more than the original guaranteed amount.

Day 2 of the Main Event is currently running and in a few hours will reach the final tables of each of the three tournaments. Tune into FTR News later this evening to see the results and recap of the SCOOP 2012 Main Event.PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker or SCOOP is in full swing with many players vying for the top prize and that wrist watch. Here is a recap of what went down in Event # 20.

Event #20 was a two day event that featured a High ($2,100), Medium ($215) and a Low ($27) buy in that brought over $3.1 million in prize money up for grabs combined.

SCOOP #20 L $27

The final table action began with 9 players, each trying to reach the a win after wading through a field of 22,013 people.

The tournament began with a $500k guarantee which was quickly dunked by the tournament’s 5516 entrants for a total prize pool of over $1.1 million.

The medium SCOOP #20 saw day 2 begin with a lot of famous faces including ‘tha giggy” formerly Dr. Giggy on FTP, widely known for his BlueFire Poker videos. Daut44, winner of many major tournaments including a PCA main event win. Unfortunately for them, neither of them ended up making the final table. The final table ended up shaping off like this.

It began with SeeYouAnte18′s pocket kings getting all in preflop against venezustar’s pocket aces for the one of the first hands of the final table which crippled SeeYouAnte18 early. The first player to be eleminated was INSHALA82, while shortstacked he shoved KJ and was called by AJ and bricked out. He won $8.8k for his 9th place finish. Eventually it whittled down to two yugurt1961 and raidalot. Both having nearly even starting stacks of ~27mil chips which gave them both around 55 big blinds heads up. In this 230 hand epic heads up match eventually ending with yugurt1961 shoved his K3o all in preflop, getting called by raidalot’s QJ and raidalot spiking an queen on the flop to win the tournament. He won over 172.5k for his efforts with yugurt1961 winning over 128.5k.

The highest buy in SCOOP event brought out all the high stakes players. The total prize pool was over $1.5 million with 782 entrants vying for the first prize of $293,250. The bubble of this tournament was very interesting as well, seeing Ivan Demidov eliminated in 11th and the mystery high stakes player “scout326” being eliminated in 10th place. Which put the final table looking like this

This final table was comprised of many nosebleed cash pros as well as many accomplished tournament pros. The first player eliminated would be anthonyff shoving AJ against mig.com’s TT. Anthonyff lost the flip as mig.com flopped a T and then turned another T for quads and anthonyff was elimnated in 9th place for $22k. BrynKenney would be the 2nd eliminated when he got it all in preflop with KQ against kenny05′s AT and bricked out. Bryn took home $35.1k for his 8th place finish.

Eventually the final table boiled down to SUNDAYKING a relatively unknown tournament pro against nosebleed cash specialist brianm15. The match went on for a fair bit before SUNDAYKING and brianm15 decided to look at numbers. Numbers couldn’t be decided upon, despite brianm15 being sure that he was dominating SUNDAYKING and play resumed. However it was SUNDAYKING who ended up winning the tournament in a pot that went like this.

SUNDAYKING minraised the button to 100k

brianm15 3b the BB to ~287k and SUNDAYKING called.

The flop came AK5 all clubs, brianm15 bet around half pot and SUNDAYKING minraised.

brianm15 then shoved his remaining 1.8million chips and was quickly called by SUNDAYKING.

SUNDAYKING held T7 of clubs against brianm15′s AsTd and brianm15 did not hit a running full house giving SUNDAYKING the win and the title.