So having played 8 hours of poker into the wee hours, I came away with a $215 SCOOP ticket. Two hundred and sixteen dollahs!!! Yeah!
Or maybe not. Looks like SCOOP tickets aren’t redeemable, at least not going by last years rules (haven’t tried with this ticket, so hopefully I’m wrong, but I saw on another blog a similar thing so I’m thinking I’m SOL with this).
So can I win loads of dosh with it? Um, no, I can win a place to another tournament. SCOOPS is a steps tournament – that $215 gets me into step 4. I have to win that, and then another to see any money.
Like that’s going to happen…
Hmph. How much could I have won playing 8 hours of husngs or cash? If it wasn’t for the great atmosphere of it, ie the chat with other bloggers, the live blogging etc, then it was a big waste of time.
Fake Profit: a ‘$215′ ticket
Real Profit: two new additions to my blogroll; Black Widow of Poker & Rabbi Poker News (there’s a few others I want to hunt down too – ppl who were chatty during the game)
I’m pretty sure that there will be a few SCOOP tournies with a $215 buyin. So you could just use your ticket for that
A $215 SCOOP tourney with cash prizes you mean? If they have that then that’s fine, I’ll have a go.
I just don’t want to think I’ve won a satellite ticket to another satellite…
Last year SCOOP was cash tourneys, for sure. They were split into 3 or 4 buy-in levels (something like: micro, low, high, and baller) and then there were different variations and games, pre-lim and main events. You;ve gotten a ticket good for one high event at least; I don’t know if they let you chop it up across multiple low or micro events.
I think I only played in one event last year — a micro buy-in six-max NLHE game — and hit a tiny cash placing 3,700 out of 22,000 entrants. Pretty good though as I never play 6-max and had a former FTOPs winner on my left the whole time.
Step tickets are for the birds though. There are pros that grind out the higher steps all day making it nigh impossible for someone from outside their clique to keep climbing….
FYI, I emailed support to find out if you can hack the $215 SCOOP ticket into smaller amounts. I’m more likely to play a couple of the small / mid events (omaha, mix, etc.) then to blow it all in one $215 tourney. Will keep you posted.
Nice work. Play the $215 and TAKE IT DOWNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
ah, good. That all sounds cool.
Reckon I’d want to split the ticket too – perhaps 4 x $50 tournies maybe? Definitely can’t redeem the ticket though (found the email)
BTW – I have a forum (obv). Feel free to say hi
also, anyone know kalamiis’ blog? or ErickRiveraD? They were chatty guys…
Just got this email from PokerStars support:
“Thank you for your email.
Unfortunately, as per our promotion’s terms and conditions, please note that we are unable to comply with your request:
‘Event tickets are not transferrable. Event tickets awarded via promotional tournaments must be used in that event or forfeited, as they have no value outside of the tournament to which they grant admission.’
(http://www.pokerstars.com/scoop/faq/)
This means that you will be required to use your ticket in a $215 event.”
It’s a bit annoying, but I guess I can’t complain because it’s free . . .
GL to you in your event!
I dunno if 8 hours of dodging bullets is free
Just have to give it a go I suppose. Who knows, might win big!
I am never one to back down, so I emailed a different person at PokerStars to see if I could split the SCOOP ticket.
Much better response:
“Hello CKBWoP,
First off, well done in the tournament.
Secondly, we should be able to split down the $215 SCOOP ticket for you, the best thing to do is wait until the SCOOP schedule has been announced and then we can arrange for the tickets that you require.”
I emailed bloggertournament@pokerstars.com (rather than the general support email).
That’s cool – I wouldn’t have thought of doing that.
All your comments are landing in my spam folder – trying to figure out why (I shouldn’t have to approve every comment if you didn’t get chucked there…)
Obv your blog hates people who shove A-Q
I’ve had an unusual number of blog hits from Estonia and Mexico city the past couple of days, that unusual number being 1. Eric Rivera seems to be an up and coming tourney player connected to the Intellipoker community; I’m sure we’ll here about him again. As for Kalamiis the Estonian, I poked around but have no idea.
As for splitting the ticket, you never know. I imagine there could be enough whales out there that you could get good value out of the whole ticket in a $215 SCOOP event. Last year Stars promoted the heck out of it. At the tail end of this week’s 2+2 pokercast Mike & Adam interviewed the guy who binked third place in Sunday’s special 2 million guarantee — a guy whose normal stakes were ~$4 180s — suggesting taking a stab outside you’re normal bankroll management limits isn’t always a bad thing!
I wrote to PS support, and they said they’d ask Eric Rivera and kalamiis if they’d be happy for their URL’s to be passed on.
PS support also said it would be a good idea for us to be able to look up player’s blogs, but they’d have to have asked our permission first – so they’re going to work that into next year’s WBCOOP.