Name: PokerStars SCOOP, one of the biggest online poker series in the world (or at least, a lot of the world — sorry, USA).
Age: 17.
Appearance: Hundreds of tournaments, millions of players, millions of dollars.
Ah, spring! Time to shake off the winter blues and get back out into the world. Absolutely, let’s go! First, though, let me just take care of this one thing.
No problem, are you going to be long? Just three and a half weeks or so.
What are you doing? Renewing your driver's licence? No, something even more fun than that. It’s the Spring Championship of Online Poker at PokerStars, from March 1-25. I’m going to be grinding indoors for a while.
That’s one heck of a long tournament. It’s a lot more than one tournament — there are literally 400 of them. It’s the busiest series of the year at PokerStars.
I think you mean the World Championship of Online Poker? That’s another big one — WCOOP 2025 had 378 tourneys and a $65M guarantee across the series. SCOOP 2025 had 380 and guaranteed $60M.
Same again this year? Not quite, the overall guarantee for 2026 is $45M, but the great thing about SCOOP is its accessibility. Almost every event on the 136-event SCOOP 2026 schedule is available at three different buy-in levels: low, medium and high, hence the 400 individual tournaments.
Again, I think you mean the World Championship of Online Poker? That does it too… now. WCOOP adopted the format in 2018, but it was SCOOP that started it all in 2009.
So WCOOP just copied SCOOP? Or is it the other way around? WCOOP first made ‘COOP’ a thing back in 2002, the spring version didn’t come along for another seven years. Since then, though, it’s become a standout of the online poker calendar. Grinders all over the world set the month aside, with many even temporarily relocating just to get involved.
Is that why no one’s coming to my home game next week? There are other reasons, trust me.
So SCOOP gets a lot of players. Good ones? Over the years the series has seen plenty of big name winners, from Daniel Negreanu and Shaun Deeb to Ari Engel and Benny Glaser. But the beauty of the multi-level buy-ins means you can join them in the winners’ circle, even for just a couple of bucks.
How about players in the USA? There’s often a smaller SCOOP for US PokerStars players, but so far there’s been no news on a 2026 series. What you can do, though, is enter our Pick 3 for SCOOP 2026 contest. Players right across America can enter for free, with the chance to win a $5K package for the Irish Open in Dublin.
So this was just a thinly veiled attempt to get me to play your contest? C’mon, it wasn’t that thinly veiled.
Do say: “I'm suddenly in the mood to play the Pick 3 contest for a free chance at an Irish Open package!”
Don’t say: “What the heck is a ‘COOP’?”
