Sticking only with the last three H.O.R.S.E. games -- razz (R), seven-card stud (S), and seven-card stud eight-or-better (E) -- and spending just five minutes on each game with the stakes rapidly increasing, turbo-style, meant the three versions of Event #18 were all destined to conclude in a flash. And...more

Triple Stud is a mixed-game variant that's become more popular since the 2009 World Series of Poker, when Jeff Lisandro won a gold bracelet in each of Stud, Razz and Stud Hi/Lo. Those events were played with a deep structure. The 2011 SCOOP Event 18-Medium Triple Stud tournament was played...more

Triple your stud. Triple your fun. For those who enjoy a game in which 43 percent of the hand is revealed face up, Event 18 of SCOOP, a $22 buy-in Triple Stud tournament, had much to offer. This event included a rotation of Stud Hi, Stud Hi-Lo and everyone's...more

Event 13 of the PokerStars SCOOP tournament series is an "Ante Up" event. Put simply, the blinds remain at 5/5 throughout the tournament, but the antes go up each level. This event was at the medium $162 buy-in as a field of 1,243 entries created a $186,450 prize pool...more

No blind increases for the duration of a tournament would be like playing a cash game for many hours hoping to bust your opponents, so increasing antes while the blinds stay the same is how you make things interesting. That is just what it was, interesting, at least until play...more

5,000 chips and blinds that stay at 5/5?!?! A thousand big blinds for pros of this caliber may cause the tournament to last until a Holiday Inn is built on Mars or my beloved Minnesota Vikings to finally win a Super Bowl (actually that will probably never happen). While the...more

Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn is having one of the best Spring Championship of Online Pokers in history. He's also probably never been more frustrated. In the past three days, Kostritsyn has gotten heads-up for SCOOP watches three times. Each time, he's finished second. As if second place was starting to make...more

While some choose to watch a horror flick on Friday the 13th some poker players opted for another type of nightmare, the $55 Limit Omaha H/L SCOOP Event. This tournament turned A Nightmare on Elm Street into A Nightmare on Fifth Street for many as bad beats that involved nasty...more

Vivacious. Thrilling. Tantalizing. Scintillating. Enthralling. Adventurous. Titillating. Provocative. Exhilarating. None of those adjectives will be seen in the rest of this recap because I'd be bending reality if I used any of them to describe the tedium of fixed limit Omaha hi/lo. Instead, I'll resort to cliches like... "watching paint...more

If you've been around tournament poker for a while you're probably familiar with the concept of the M-ratio. First quantified by Paul Magriel, the M-ratio tells a poker player just how healthy his stack is compared to the current cost of being at the table. In order to calculate your...more

Poker players are often publicized for their superstitions, though few actually alter their lives or poker habits because of them. But one day that often puts people in a state of unease simply out of tradition is Friday the 13th. People around the world reported problems with various internet program...more

Technically, turbo tournaments are not "flippaments", as such term is generally understood. However, they are definitely "rungoodaments". Nobody who plays much poker at all has any illusion about the luck needed to run through a 307-player turbo MTT field. That was the challenge that players faced in 2011 SCOOP Event...more

"Hey anyone want to play a three table $5,200 SnG, we will even throw in a championship watch to the winner!" Team Online was doing some recruiting as well: Donald: "Can someone join me at this table?" In the early going just nine players signed up for this monster buy-in...more

Event #12 of the PokerStars SCOOP, Event #12-M - $265 No-Limit Knockout, drew a field of 2,548 entries for the 2-day event. Each player had a $50 bounty on their head to create a bounty pool of $127,400 but the players were more interested in the $509,600 prize pool...more

"Those $500 for the KO make me go crazy sometimes." So said Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn at the start of the final table of Event #12-High, the $2,600 no-limit hold'em knockout event for which players receive a $500 bounty for each opponent they eliminate. Speaking of crazy, Kostritsyn is having...more

Wannabe poker pugilists took the term "knockout" to heart. The entrants in the $27 buy-in Low edition of Event #12: No-Limit Hold'em Knockout barely needed the second day, as 16,279 players were whittled down to 11 in only 44 levels of play on Thursday. That's a heck of a...more

Don't be ashamed. We all have something with which we struggle. Some people eat too much. Some people are oblivious to risk. Some people misunderstand the term "semi-bluff." Some people suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia. If you're among the latter, we humbly suggest you take the day off from the Spring Championship...more

The infamous heads-up match between Johnny Moss and Nick the Greek, supposedly hosted near the entrance to Benny Binion's Horseshoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas in the early 1950s, pitted the two adversaries in a game of Five-card draw. Flash forward fifty years later to Binion's in 2003. Chris Moneymaker...more

You don't often see someone predict victory and then deliver. Babe Ruth comes to mind. Joe Namath. YouPayMyF458? You bet. After failing to interest his final table opponent, gasi555 in a deal, YouPayMyF458 promised a win -- and delivered. Reaching the final table of 2011 Scoop Event 11-Low required winning...more

Just one person standing between you and the win, heads-up play worrying about what the button is doing every other orbit or if the player on table 25 is running over his table. Just one person between you and that SCOOP champions watch. Alexander "joiso" Kostritsyn had that chance last...more