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Home / News / SCOOP 2021: Smith and Lyubovetskiy win again as Lau seeks Main Event double

Welcome to the last day of the 2021 Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP). Here’s all you need to know…


TODAY’S HEADLINES

• Main Event champs set to be crowned
• Biggest tournaments end on SCOOP final day
• Lau wins PLO Main and makes NLHE final
• Smith and Lyubovetskiy back for more


BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Tatiana “Mysters_Y” Barausova

Enormous final day in store: SCOOP 2021 is into its last day, with crazy action scheduled for the finale. The three hold’em Main Events will all play to a winner, including the $10K Main Event, where there’s $1.13 million in store for the champion. The former Sunday Million champ “kZhh” of Hungary leads the final nine, but the likes of David “MissOracle” Yan, Christian “WATnlos” Rudolph and Ka Kwan “kaju85” Lau all wait in the wings. Lau could pull off a remarkable double, having already won the PLO Main Event (see below). Meanwhile the massive “Phase” events also play to a winner. Tatiana “Mysters_Y” Barausova leads the $215 “High” tournament there, while whomever wins the “low” will have beaten a field of 111,647 entries, the most of the series by far. See “Tournaments Ongoing” section below for more details.

Lau won PLO Main and made final of the NLHE Main

Lau adds another major PLO title: Poker players have been setting up home in some off-the-beaten-track locations during this SCOOP, keen to play one of the biggest online series but perhaps somewhat restricted in their travel plans. One of the main beneficiaries has been the tiny microstate of Andorra, in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France. It was from there that last night Ka Kwan “kaju85” Lau took down the $10,300 PLO Main Event (SCOOP-93-H) while “Francois2323” was part of a heads up chop in the $109 version (SCOOP-92-L). (Francois2323 ended up in second place, behind “DaCus3” of Germany.) Lau is well known to avid poker watchers, particularly thanks to his fourth-place finish at the 2013 EPT Prague Main Event, behind Julian Track, and a win in the $10K PLO event of EPT Online last year. He also won a PLO side event at the PokerStars Championship Macau, in 2017, so this is clearly his variant of choice. Last night’s success was for $263,099, the biggest non-hold’em prize of the series, and came after a heads-up deal with Denmark’s “LamassuShedu”. (Miraculously, Lau is also at the final table of the $10K Hold’em Main Event, which concludes tonight!) The “medium” version of the PLO went to high-stake cash-game reg Joel “Odonkor1” Nordkvist, whose first career ‘COOP title came with a $153,356 payday.


MORE ABOUT SCOOP:
SCHEDULE & RESULTS | SATELLITE GUIDE | SERIES HIGHLIGHTS
FULL SCOOP RESULTS | YEAR-BY-YEAR | MULTIPLE CHAMPIONS
OFFICIAL SCOOP PAGE | ALL BLOG REPORTS | DOWNLOAD AND PLAY!


Lyubovetskiy makes it two

Lyubovetskiy is latest double champ: On his Pocket Fives profile, Andriy “Andre_Hansen” Lyubovetskiy describes himself as a “Genius Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist” and while it’s impossible to corroborate three of those claims, his SCOOP stats suggest the first one is at least accurate. Lyubovetskiy last night won his third career SCOOP title, and the second of this year, when he beat the 446-entry field in the $530 PLO/NLHE Mix, for $29,416, including bounties. Earlier on this series, the Ukrainian won a $2K 6-Max for close to $100K, and he has previously won a Sunday Million SCOOP Special Edition. He also had to outlast the two duelling Player of the Series contenders, with Patrick “pads1161” Leonard and Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin both making day two. However, those two perished in 26th and 14th, respectively, leaving the way clear for Lyubovetskiy to prove his genius.

Two for Smith, eight years on

Rebmun 2 for “4rebmun”: Elliot Smith has been playing elite-level poker for more than a decade, with his breakout live performances happening around 2009/2010, and his first success in SCOOP occurring in 2013. Playing on PokerStars as “4rebmun“, Smith won $276K in a $2K NLHE event back then, and it seems surprising that he had to wait eight more years before adding another SCOOP title. However, Smith finally now does have a second after he took down the $530 buy-in Heads-Up Turbo Zoom (SCOOP-99-H) last night, banking $28,128. The $356,500 prize pool was distributed entirely in bounties, with Smith claiming the biggest of the them all when he beat his final opponent “Nacho12441” of Mexico. Nacho12441 made do with $17,017. “Babysaures” of the Netherlands won the medium version, and collected bounties worth $13,791, while “petrovks” won the low, for $3,191.


TOURNAMENTS ONGOING

Nine players are left in each of the hold’em Main Events, with winners set to be crowned in front of the PokerStars Twitch and YouTube audiences tonight. Here’s the state of play:

SCOOP-92-H: $10,300 NLHE Main Event
Entries: 664 (inc. 202 re-entries)
Prize pool: $6,640,000
First prize: $1,130,396

1 – kZhh (Hungary) – 36,337,283
2 – Dannyz0r (Romania) – 27,226,846
3 – KayhanMok (Norway) – 24,481,279
4 – David “MissOracle” Yan (New Zealand) – 22,093,278
5 – jareth3542 (United Kingdom) – 16,244,374
6 – Beowulf3182 (Netherlands) – 12,992,862
7 – Christian “WATnlos” Rudolph (Austria) – 12,110,472
8 – Ka Kwan “kaju85” Lau (Andorra) – 8,747,104
9 – 23tudy23 (Romania) – 5,766,502

SCOOP-92-M: $1,050 NLHE Main Event
Entries: 5,903 (inc. 1,796 re-entries) | 735 paid
Prize pool: $5,903,000 | First prize: $838,909
Players left: 9 | Chip leader: alimounda (Greece)

SCOOP-92-L: $109 NLHE Main Event
Entries: 38,913 (inc. 14,224 re-entries) | 5,436 paid
Prize pool: $3,891,300 | First prize: $376,087
Players left: 9 | Chip leader: Essa_mania (United Kingdom)

The Phase events also played their Day 2s yesterday, cutting their enormous fields down to the final three tables. All three levels of the Super Tuesday event also played through Day 1 yesterday and will be concluded later today.


TODAY’S RESULTS


†inc. bounties
*after deal


STAT TRACKER

Today is the final day of SCOOP, and we have added entry numbers and prize pools for all ongoing tournaments to the stat tracker. The first-place prizes total feature the amounts published for the winners, but are liable to change if players agree deals. Nine further events begin today, and the stat tracker obviously does not include entry/prize pool information for these.

Whatever way you look at it, these are some tasty numbers:

Entries: 1,685,563 (inc. 320,677 re-entries)
Prize pools: $134,516,241
First place payouts: $19,373,699 (inc. $3,077,106 in bounties)
Tournaments completed: 288
Tournaments ongoing: 9
Tournaments starting today: 9


INTERVIEWS! INTERVIEWS! INTERVIEWS!

Power cut dulled the joy for Fintan Hand

We’ve been catching up with some of the stars of SCOOP to talk about their latest triumphs, including:

Why Fintan Hand’s career highlight still hurts
Noah Boeken: Poker’s successful dinosaur
Dragos “Fenryr03” Trofimov’s long road to profitability
Márton “Komarcus” Kókai looks on the bright side
Santo “kleinebakker007” Bakker follows near-miss with SCOOP win
Mason Pye’s Mixed Game Movement gaining momentum
Marcos “masaldanha94″ Saldanha: Luck at the right moments
“Marcelinhobf” puts the pieces togerher for $34K win
Dejan “dejanlc357” Kaladjurdjevic: First ever from Montenegro — and he’s won three!
Daniel Almeida: Study brings success
Francesco “dottorsydUK” La Cognata makes the most of his free time
Elias “SinKarma” Gutierrez on winning title with 15,000 watching
Fagner “FagnerCR7” Brito one step closer to ambition of turning pro


TWITCH WATCH

Lex Veldhuis moved back to centre stage last night with a deep run in the $1,050 medium Main Event. With 35 left, this pot gave him the chip lead:

But he then ran into this incredibly annoying spot:

It all ended in disappointment in 17th place. “Doesn’t feel great at all,” Veldhuis said.:


COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD

Another scattering of titles last night left Brazil still leagues ahead of everyone else. They will rubber-stamp another leader board win when the tournaments finish later today.

Latest standings:

46 – Brazil
33 – Russia
28 – UK
20 – Sweden
13 – Canada, Netherlands
10 – Finland, Germany
9 – Austria, Poland, Romania
8 – Hungary
7 – Norway
6 – Argentina, Czech Republic
5 – Bulgaria, Greece, Mexico, Ukraine
4 – Belarus, Croatia, Denmark, Malta
3 – Latvia, Montenegro
2 – Andorra, Bolivia, Estonia, Ireland
1 – Belgium, Chile, Isle of Man, Japan, Lithuania, Moldova, New Zealand, Slovakia, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.


TODAY’S ACTION

It’s officially the final day of SCOOP 2021, and while the Main Events and the huge phase tournaments are all playing to their winners, everyone else has nine more chances to win a title. The “Final Freeze” kicks off at 1.05pm ET and is a big old freezeout, with buy-ins at $55, $530 and $5,200. Then the 6+ hold’em offers all you short-deck fiends another chance to shine. The whole shebang wraps up with a celebratory hyper turbo PKO, starting at 3.05pm ET. Enjoy!

1.05pm ET:
100-L: $55 NLHE 8-Max, Final Freeze, $250K Gtd
100-M: $530 NLHE 8-Max, Final Freeze, $350K Gtd
100-H: $5,200 NLHE 8-Max, Final Freeze, $700K Gtd

2.15pm ET:
101-L: $11 6+ Hold’em 8-Max, $25K Gtd
101-M: $109 6+ Hold’em 8-Max, $40K Gtd
101-H: $1,050 6+ Hold’em 8-Max, $75K Gtd

3.05pm ET:
102-L: $5.50 NLHE 7-Max, Hyper-Turbo, PKO, Series Wrap-Up, $40K Gtd
102-M: $55 NLHE 7-Max, Hyper-Turbo, PKO, Series Wrap-Up, $125K Gtd
102-H: $530 NLHE 7-Max, Hyper-Turbo, PKO, Series Wrap-Up, $175K Gtd


LEADER BOARD LATEST

The two leader board rival sat next to each other last night

There were a number of min-cashes added to player totals overnight, with the result that Patrick “pads1161” Leonard is now only 15 leader board points behind Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin at the top of the Overall standings. Both players also min-cashed both the Mini Super Tuesday and the Super Tuesday proper, and those points will be added on tonight. Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna is still alive in the Super Tuesday; all four contenders cashed at least one Phase event; and we can probably expect a lot of bullets to be fired by them all in the remaining SCOOP tournaments. This is a very long-winded way of saying that this $25K first prize is still on the line going into the last day.

Here’s the latest standings:

Overall Player of the Series
1 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia – 1,640 points
2 – Patrick “pads1161” Leonard, UK – 1,625
3 – aleksandrs10, Russia – 1,560
4 – Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna, Finland – 1,555
5 – Konstantin “krakukra” Maslak, Russia – 1,425

Winner: $25,000 + Trophy

High
1 – Patrick “pads1161” Leonard, UK – 815 points
2 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia – 785
3 – Simon “C. Darwin2” Mattsson, Sweden – 690
=4 – Jonah “RaiseUpBlind” Silverstein, Canada – 680
=4 – Jussi “calvin7v” Nevanlinna, Finland – 680

Prizes: 1st – $15,000 + Trophy; 2nd – $10,000; 3rd – $5,000

Medium
1 – aleksandrs10, Russia – 680 points
2 – Ilari “Fabahaba” Tahkokallio, Finland – 655
3 – Patrick “pads1161” Leonard, UK – 490
4 – Rinat “Zapahzamazki” Lyapin, Russia – 455
5 – römpsä, Finland – 445

Prizes: 1st – $10,000 + Trophy; 2nd – $7,500; 3rd – $5,000 (10 players rewarded)

Low
1 – FONBET_RULIT, Russia – 685 points
2 – rawsignature, Norway – 565
3 – aleksandrs10, Russia – 555
=4 – phil_a-QQ, Germany – 540
=4 – Alex_Vol, Russia – 540

Prizes: 1st – $5,000 + Trophy; 2nd – $2,500; 3rd – $1,500 (20 players rewarded)

See official SCOOP page for more details


WATCH! WATCH! WATCH!

PokerStars’ streaming army will be out in force during this SCOOP, with all of Lex Velduis, Spraggy, Fintan “easywithaces” Hand, Arlie “Prince Pablo” Shaban, Mason “Pyefacepoker” Pye and Georgina “GJReggie” James certain to be playing most, if not all, days.

The PokerStars central Twitch and YouTube account will also be streaming cards-up final table action five nights a week. Here’s the schedule.

SCOOP 2021 broadcast schedule


PREVIOUS ROUND-UPS

Day 1: Opening night salvos
Day 2: Bujitas and Brazil win big
Day 3: Shakerchi reigns as superstars dominate
Day 4: Double for Montenegro, plus Mateos and Malinowski
Day 5: Two in a night for Nevanlinna; three for Montenegro
Day 6: Lex denied by Padilha
Day 7: Two $1m+ prize pools, and more Lex
Day 8: Astedt and Mulder take customary titles
Day 9: Two in a night for Mattsson
Day 10: Viera crushes again as Moorman wins first
Day 11: Mateos does it again, huge night for Brazil
Day 12: Benitez and Badziakouski take headlines
Day 13: More titles for Leonard, Theologis, Track and WhatIfGod
Day 14: Back-to-back for Leonard as Pye claims one for Red Spade
Day 15: Glaser makes it six and first for Mathis
Day 16: Salas shines, Watson wins seventh
Day 17: Mateos wins third title, Spraggy so close
Day 18: Fintan Hand becomes two-time champ, wins #82-H for $232K
Day 19: Main Events kick off and nine more champs
Day 20: Main Events play into the money

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