PokerStars Unveils Schedules For US Spring Championships In New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan

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Tournament poker players in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan will have plenty of games to join from the comfort of home over the next few weeks.

PokerStars recently released the schedules for its popular and celebrated Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) series. The series for each state runs from Mar. 25 through Apr. 11 and features more than 100 tournaments.

Like last year, SCOOP features three buy-in levels, or tiers, for each event. The Low, Medium and High tiers are designed to appeal to players of all bankroll sizes, allowing everyone to get in on the action. Buy-ins across the series range from $10 to $2000, save for in New Jersey, where it caps out at $1000.

Some guarantees for US SCOOPs are down from last year, but only slightly. PASCOOP is offering the biggest overall series guarantee, $2 million, which matches last year’s total. However, MISCOOP is down from $2 million to $1.5 million this year and NJSCOOP is down from $1.2 million to an even $1 million.

In New Jersey’s case, the decrease could be due to the series experiencing a fair amount of overlays last year. NJSCOOP still generated positive revenue despite that, but PokerStars tends to be more averse to overlays than some competitors. In Michigan, at this time last year, PokerStars still held a monopoly and was benefiting from post-launch excitement. A decrease there was probably inevitable.

Perhaps with more players returning to live poker in recent months, PokerStars is taking a slightly more conservative estimate to their turnouts for SCOOP. Either way, the prize pools will still offer hefty payouts for tournament cashes and wins.

Games and Highlights

Compared to other tournament series on PokerStars calendar, SCOOP offers a nice variety of games. While only included in MISCOOP last year, each state now has 8-Game tournaments at all three buy-in tiers. This year, MISCOOP and PASCOOP are also running Razz and PLO8 events, while all three states are featuring HORSE as well. However, as most would expect, the majority of the tournaments are either No-Limit Hold’em or Pot Limit Omaha events.

Each state’s Main Event lands on April 10 with buy-in tiers of $50, $300 and $1,000. Despite having a lower buy-in than the high roller main, the mid-level $300 event will easily attract the largest player and prize pools. Guarantees for the $300 Main Event for NJSCOOP, PASCOOP and MISCOOP weigh in at $100,000, $200,000 and $150,000, respectively. Unsurprisingly, these are far and away the biggest tournament guarantees of the series.

A notable addition to this year’s schedule are the Trophy Events, which are scattered throughout the series. As the name suggests, these tournaments offer the winner a SCOOP trophy, in addition to the prize money. Each state is offering 27 such tournaments, including the 8 Game events.

Consistency is key

With many similarities to last year’s schedule and structure, and with the three states almost mirroring one another’s SCOOP schedules this year, it’s clear PokerStars is aiming to establish consistency with SCOOP in the US. Internationally, SCOOP is always a highly-anticipated series on the online poker calendar, drawing large fields year after year. But in the US, SCOOP is considerably younger. So, creating a familiar format that players can count on could be a way to attract them back each year.

Last year, PASCOOP kicked off before NJSCOOP and MISCOOP. However, this year, for the first time, PokerStars has aligned the schedules so that they run concurrently. This could be another example of the site striving for consistent, dependable patterns. However, since we are beginning to see these alignments across PokerStars events more often recently (like with the Winter Series), it could indicate that PokerStars is setting the stage for the possibility of the three states joining the same pool on a larger PokerStars network. Most poker players certainly hope to see that come to fruition.

Series schedules

In the meantime, let’s take a closer look at the separate schedules for each state.

Jump to:

• NJSCOOP
• PASCOOP
• MISCOOP

NJSCOOP 2022

As the veterans of the SCOOP series, New Jersey players have a total of 105 tournaments to play with an average buy-in of $98. All but nine of those 105 tournaments are NLHE. Other than the Main Event, the $300 Spring Special and the $200 Spring Special PKO events (both also Trophy Events) should draw big fields with $45,000 and $40,000 guarantees, respectively.

Sign up for PokerStars NJ today to participate in NJSCOOP!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Events whose dates are marked with an asterisk (*) have their tiers spread across three days. The Low Tier takes place on the first day of the indicated range, followed by the Mid Tier, and then the High Tier on the final day of the range.

PASCOOP 2022

Pennsylvania’s SCOOP features 120 tournaments and the highest average buy-in of the three states, at $109. It has more of a mix of games compared to NJSCOOP, with 18 non-Hold’em tournaments. Besides its Main Event, all three tiers of the Bigstack Spring Championship and the 6-Max Spring Championship offer some great value with guarantees from $8,500 to $50,000 for buy-ins ranging from $20 to $500.

Want to try your luck in PASCOOP 2022? Sign up for an account at PokerStars!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Events whose dates are marked with an asterisk (*) have their tiers spread across three days. The Low Tier takes place on the first day of the indicated range, followed by the Mid Tier, and then the High Tier on the final day of the range.

MISCOOP 2022

The second MISCOOP ever also boasts 120 tournaments with the lowest average buy-in at $88. The schedule itself is nearly identical to PASCOOP though, as it too has 18 non-NLHE tournaments.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Events whose dates are marked with an asterisk (*) have their tiers spread across three days. The Low Tier takes place on the first day of the indicated range, followed by the Mid Tier, and then the High Tier on the final day of the range.