The PokerStars 2021 Spring Championship of Online Poker is officially in the books. With $100 million in total prize money guaranteed and 306 total tournaments, the series proved, once again, to be one of the marquee events on the poker calendar. Now that it’s over we have the opportunity to take a look back at some of the biggest events and winners of the series, going inside some of the eye-popping numbers that made the 13th annual spring festival so successful.

Exceed The Guarantee

PokerStars slapped a $100 million guarantee on SCOOP 2021, marking the first time in the series’ history that the company had promised a number so high. The enthusiasm for player participation wasn’t unwarranted, as just one year ago prize pools for SCOOP 2020 pushed past the $130 million mark.

As was expected, players showed up en masse and across all 102 events at three buy-in levels generated $138,204,868 in total prize money (~38% more than was guaranteed.) The break out for prize pools went as follows – $62,718,174 for the High buy-ins (45% of series total), $52,132,505 (38%) for the Medium and $23,354,189 (17%) for the Low.

It’s interesting to compare the percentages of payouts to that of total entries. Over the course of 25 days of action, the series saw an astonishing 1,723,716 total entries, an average of 68,948 entries per day. There’s not a lot to take away from an average number of entries per day, except to say that PokerStars was keeping pretty busy during the series.

The registration breakdown shows 55,593 total entries for the High buy-in events, 404,670 for Medium, and a massive 1,263,453 for the Low. In yet another example of “the greater the risk, the greater the reward”, just 3% of the total entries (represented by the High buy-in) collected 45% of the series payouts. The Medium buy-in events were good for roughly 23% of entries while 73% of all SCOOP registrations took place in the Low.

Million Dollar Prize Pools

Players wanting to splash around in massive prize pools didn’t have to look very far to find them. SCOOP 2021 featured 30 events with prize pools of $1 million or more (17 High, 10 Medium, 3 Low), only three ended up not paying out a six-figure score to the winner, deals included.

Here’s a look at the ten biggest prize pools of the series.

It should be expected that the SCOOP 2021 Main Events lead the way, however, it also shows some additional value to be found in the large-field Medium events as two of the next three events were categorized as such including Event #4-M ($215 NLHE PKO Sunday Million), the largest prize pool for something other than a Main Event.

As a side note, the top 10 tournaments and their prize money total of $29,762,675 represented 21.5% of all the money paid out over the series.

Large Field Events

When it comes to which events produced the largest fields, a general rule is “how low can you go?”. Of the top 10 largest fields, nine belonged to Low buy-in events with the lone Medium event being the multi-flight Phase tournament, which some might feel is a technicality.

No matter the buy-in, packed lobbies often provide a large return on investment so here’s a look at the largest events of SCOOP 2021 and the players who navigated those tough, massive fields.

To The Victor Go The Spoils

For both recreational players and professionals alike, the appeal of the spring series is the opportunity to play for large, potentially life-changing, sums of money. On that front, SCOOP 2021 delivered yet again. Of the 306 tournaments, 51 had winners that walked away with six-figure sums, including three champions from the Low tier.

And when the big money was on the line, poker’s elite players stepped into the spotlight. All-Time Online Money List leader Joao ‘Naza114’ Vieira, former #1-ranked Patrick ‘pads1161’ Leonard, and 2020 WSOP Main Event champion Damian ‘pampa27’ Salas all found themselves among the top 10 scores from those who took down a title.

Single Biggest Scores

This list looks a little different from the top 10 overall scores, with the Main Events weighing in so heavily. Here’s a look at the most eye-popping single scores of the series.

It should be no surprise for those who followed along to see Romania’s ‘Dannyz0r’ at the top of the list. The Main Events dominate this category and when the $10K High ME found its final three players, they agreed to a chop which locked up the series top prize for ‘Dannyz0r’, despite not winning the event.

Winner, Winner

Whether it’s SCOOP or the WSOP, history has shown that over the course of a lengthy championship series, there are going to be players who win multiple titles. It was no different for SCOOP 2021 in two players, Adrian ‘Amadi_017’ Mateos and Dejan ‘dejanic357’ Kaladjurdjevic, took down three SCOOP 2021 titles while another 13 players claimed two victories.

Here’s an overview of the multiple title winners and how much their victories earned them.