SCOOP schedule, Hastings Interview and more
Brian Hastings.
PokerStars has released the preliminary schedule for the 2013 SCOOP.
PokerStars has released the preliminary schedule for the 2013 SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker).
The popular tournament series will run this year from May 12th-26th and will feature 42 events - two events more than in 2012.
As in the previous years all of the tournaments will have three different buy-ins - Low, Medium and High buy-in.
The 2013 SCOOP will get underway on Sunday, May 12th, and culminate at 14:30 ET on Sunday, May 26th with the Main Event that has buy-ins of $109, $1,050 and $10,300.
The guaranteed prize pool for each event will be released at a later date, when the official schedule is made available.
See PokerStars Blog for more information about the preliminary schedule.
Brian Hastings in a new interview
In a new interview with Cardplayer.com, Brian Hastings talks a little about his childhood, how he got into poker and how Black Friday has affected him.
Hastings tells how he got into poker playing home games with friends after the 2003 World Series coverage on ESPN, and by the time he graduated high school, he had $300,000 in his Ultimate Bet account and a very high win rate in every game he played.
"I was pretty sure I could be a full-time pro if I wanted to.", Hastings recalls.
When the discussion moves to Black Friday, Hastings has this to say:
"Like most of my fellow American poker pros, I am outraged by the whole situation. Our country was founded based on principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Restricting the citizens’ freedom to choose whether to play poker online is a horrible failing of those principles. And that’s before getting into the hypocrisy of state lotteries and the like.
As for my personal life, it led to a lot of different temporary homes, stress, depression, and a whole lot of confusion regarding what I want to do with my life. Some of this may have happened anyway, but Black Friday certainly had a major impact. I’m in a good place right now — living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, playing live poker here and traveling to play some, a little bit of online, and just getting into coaching but I would certainly love to be able to play online poker in my native country which calls itself the ‘Land of the Free’."
See CardPlayer for full interview.
2012 WSOP Main Event finalist wins Sunday Million tournament
Russell Thomas, who finished 4th last year in the WSOP Main Event for over $2.8 million, managed to take down the latest Sunday Million tournament on PokerStars for $219,184.
"Winning the sunday million was my first dream from when i was a 6.50 sng grinder when i would save up enough fpps to take a shot" , American poker pro told on Twitter after winning.
The Sunday Million attracted 8,407 players and the final prize pool was almost $1,7 million.
PokerStars Sunday Million results (March 24, 2013):
Players: 8,407
Prize pool: $1,681.400.00
Places paid: 1,260
1. Russell "into2ndWind" Thomas (Canada) $219,184.25*
2. Ahhh Is It? (United Kingdom) $174,095.79*
3. aakiss1990 (Latvia) $160,913.72*
4. briemaus (Germany) $84,070.00
5. KARNA1983 (United Kingdom) $67,256.00
6. Dimka19881 (Russia) $50,442.00
7. BEGIMOTS (Latvia) $33,628.00
8. purplflowerz (Sweden) $18,495.40
9. VinceVegaMFR (Brazil) $13,030.85
*=deal
Check back for more news round-ups later this week!