Have you drafted your Pick 3 SCOOP team yet? All you need to do is pick three players for the 2026 SCOOP festival and you could win a $5K Irish Open package! Hurry – the deadline is March 1 at 8am ET.
This past weekend, jubilant photos taken in Las Vegas told us what people who follow PokerStars COOPs already knew: Yuri Dzivielevski is a mixed-games wizard.
Just as managers in the PokerOrg Pick 3 game were pondering adding the player named 'theNERDguy' to their fantasy teams, Dzivielevski, the man behind the moniker, won the $100K Super High Roller Bowl Mixed Games in the PokerGo studio, continuing a sensational run to begin 2026. Dzivielevski has already won more than $2 million in mixed-game tournaments this year.
There’s another place where mixed-game mastery pays: SCOOP. It's a simple fact that all of the players who have the most lifetime COOP titles and who harvest the most leaderboard points every year are the ones who play the most mixed games.
Benny 'RunGodlike' Glaser, the most decorated COOP player of them all, has 27 titles in these flagship online tourneys. Only five of them have come in no-limit hold'em (one is in limit hold'em). As for Dzivielevski, six of his nine WCOOP titles are from mixed games, and four of his five SCOOP titles came in similar formats.
It's where the big points are, folks.
On this year's SCOOP schedule of 400 tournaments, 99 are in non-hold'em variants. It still skews heavily in favor of the two-card game, of course, but the mixed games tend to have smaller fields and therefore a greater chance of a final table appearance for the most comfortable players.
You would therefore be wise to consider the following mixed game masters as you select your teams:
Benny 'RunGodlike' Glaser
As stated, he's the ultimate COOP crusher who is a mixed-game sensation. He kickstarted his COOP dominance with a $2,200 Stud Hi/Lo title in SCOOP in 2016, and he has been the man to beat ever since.
Denis 'aDrENalin710' Strebkov
The ultimate cluster winner is also a tremendous mixed game talent, with 10 SCOOP titles in variants other than hold'em and 13 in WCOOP. In fact, Strebkov only has one NLHE win among 24 gongs. He has six HORSE victories, just to underline the versatility of his talents.
Andre 'Premove' Skvortsov
He's far from a household name, but when the COOPs come around, 'Premove' will be there. Of his 11 SCOOP titles, nine are in non-hold'em variants. All five WCOOP wins are in mixed games too.
'FAL1st' and 'king153246'
It almost goes without saying that our anonymous leaderboard-leading duo, representing Thailand and Albania, respectively, are also mixed-games players of some repute. 'FAL1st' got their SCOOP title haul off and running with a win in a $109 Badugi event in 2021, and has since added titles in 5-Card PLO, PLO8 (three), HORSE, Stud, regular PLO and FLO8. Meanwhile, 'king153246' has won both their SCOOP titles in hold'em, but has four WCOOP wins in non-hold'em events. They're definitely due in SCOOP.
Patrick 'pads1161' Leonard
It's amazing we've got so far down this article without mentioning Patrick Leonard, who, as 'pads1161' on PokerStars, has been synonymous with COOP leaderboard wins ever since they existed. Leonard is a hold'em sensation, but he's an incredible player in all variants, with three SCOOP mixed-game wins and four in WCOOP.
Kelvin ‘Kelvin_FP:AR’ Kerber
While Yuri 'theNERDguy' Dzivielevski is the most prominent of the brilliant Brazilians, his countryman Kelvin ‘Kelvin_FP:AR’ Kerber goes shoulder-to-shoulder in SCOOP. Kerber is always there or thereabouts in the leaderboard race, and he has titles in Stud Hi/Lo, 5-Card PLO8 and Stud to prove it. He also did a Fixed Limit Hold'em double in 2024, winning two tiers of the same event.
Exception to the rule: Simon 'C. Darwin2' Mattsson
You surely get the idea by now: to be a SCOOP crusher, you have to dominate the mixed games. Well, mostly. No one has as many SCOOP titles as Simon 'C. Darwin2' Mattsson's 14. And how many of those are from mixed games? Only three.
So let's modify that original rule: if you want to be a SCOOP crusher, you either have to dominate the mixed games or be as good at hold'em as Simon Mattsson. Got it?
Draft your 2026 SCOOP Pick 3 team now, and you could win a 2026 $5K Irish Open package.
