SCOOP Main Events underway - is your Pick 3 team climbing or crashing?

Over at PokerStars’ global platform the Main Events of the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) are up and running, with the $109 Low, $1,050 Medium and $5,200 High versions all kicking off on Sunday evening.

Play is paused at time of writing, although late registration remains open until some 35 minutes into the start of Day 2 (which will commence at 1:30pm ET on Monday, March 23). Each is scheduled to play out over four days, crowning winners on Wednesday.

As things stand, several hours before play resumes for Day 2, all three Main Events are well on course to outstrip their guarantees.

• The $109 edition requires 15,000 entries to meet the $1.5M guarantee, and has 13,936 at time of writing.
• The $1,050 version has already exceeded its $2M guarantee, with 2,254 entries creating a prizepool of more than $2.2M.
• The $5,200 tournament has 362 of the 400 entries needed to meet its $2M guarantee.

Monday’s Day 2s will play down to a set number of remaining players: 160 in the Low, 80 in the Medium and 40 in the High. Tuesday’s Day 3 will play down to a final table in each.

Patrick 'Pads' Leonard is now the undisputed king of the 'COOPs.

Pads makes history, but ‘FAL1st’ tops the leaderboard

Having claimed the record for most SCOOP titles over the weekend, Patrick ‘pads1161’ Leonard now tops not only the all-time SCOOP winners’ list, but the overall ‘COOP list (which also includes victories in the World Championship of Online Poker).

Leonard has built a decent stack in each of the three Main Events after Day 1 — see below. These series-headlining tourneys don’t just feature the biggest prizes of the weeks-long online festival, but also some of the best opportunities to win points for the SCOOP leaderboards.

Weighted for the size of buy-in and the size of the field, these points not only matter in the race for Player of the Series, but also in our Pick 3 for SCOOP 2026 contest.

With just a few days to go until our contest wraps up and someone wins a trip to play the Irish Poker Open, here are the top 5 players in our Pick 3 competition:

Check your team now to see how close you are to the top, but remember we’re not done just yet.

With the biggest points-scoring opportunities still to come, who is best positioned to add to their tally?

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The $109 Low Main Event

This tourney currently has around 3,750 players still in, and among them are various names from our Pick 3 field. Each started with a stack of 25K.

• ‘PIUlimeira’ (19th, 334K)
• ‘FAL1st’ (181st, 219K)
• Patrick ‘pads1161’ Leonard (364th, 180K)
• ‘markovitsus’ (641st, 151K)

Leading the way heading into Day 2 is ‘Flowkid1’ of Germany, with a stack of 518K, but with literally thousands of players still in the hunt there’s a long way to go.

The $1,050 Medium Main Event

At the time of writing, around 700 players are set to play Monday’s Day 2. Among them is FAL1st, who has just fired his 6th and final bullet so will be starting the day with a fresh starting stack of 100K.

Brazil’s ‘lucasnortel’ has the chip lead with 1.2M chips, and a number of our Pick 3 players can be found towards the top of the chip counts.

• ‘Aziz.Mancha’ (4th, 1M)
• ‘iamivar’ (7th, 1M)
• ‘eddycadub’ (11th, 897K)
• Renan ‘Internett93o’ Bruschi (471st, 185K)
• Patrick ‘pads1161’ Leonard (59th, 681K)
• ‘king153246’ (43rd, 722K)
• Niklas ‘Lena900’ Astedt (184th, 428K)
• Denis ‘aDrENalin710’ Strebkov (167th, 457K)
• Ivan 'zidix' Zhechev (210th, 393K)
• Benny ‘RunGodlike’ Glaser (488th, 175K)

The $5,200 High Main Event

Just over 100 players remain in the biggest buy-in version of the Main Event, but as with all three editions the numbers are expected to grow before late registration closes.

Leading the way into Day 2 is Ukraine’s ‘YanZ97’, who has turned a starting stack of 250K into 2.8M, but various Pick 3 players are hot on their heels, including:

• ‘ShipitFTW911’ (5th, 2.4M)
• ‘bbernardinho’ (6th, 2.2M)
• ‘Naza114’ (7th, 2.2M)
• Samuel ‘€urop€an’ Vousden (8th, 2M)
• ‘starwins :)’ (18th, 1.3M)
• Andras ‘probirs’ Nemeth (31st, 988K)
• Niklas ‘Lena900’ Astedt (27th, 1M)
• Patrick ‘pads1161’ Leonard (66th, 509K)
• Ivan 'zidix' Zhechev (76th, 394K)

Finally, while not a player we made available to draft in our Pick 3 contest, Argentina’s ‘TEENage TuRtL’ looks to be closing out the series on a high.

Currently 3rd in chips in the Medium event and 16th in the High, this is clearly a name to watch out for (and, with a strong finish, could be added to next year’s contest).

On the current Pick 3 2026 leaderboard, Team StopLossing remains in a dominant position heading into the final few days.

Registration in all three SCOOP Main Events closes just after 2pm ET on March 23. Head to PokerStars before then to take a seat.