SCOOP Oop-A-Doop

The PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker is just a few weeks away, with Event #1 kicking off on May 2. Like many people, I won an $11 SCOOP ticket in the WBCOOP a few months ago. I was hoping there'd be a good mix of "low" SCOOP events in which to use the ticket. Turns out... not so much.

Only 8 of the 38 "low" events are $11 events, and three of those are rebuy events. Thus the $11 ticket, which seemed like a modest but useful prize back in January during the WBCOOP, now has considerably less utility. I won't use my SCOOP ticket for any of the rebuy events. Rebuy events aren't to my taste and anyway I'd like to treat my SCOOP foray as a freeroll, as I suspect many $11 ticket winners would. That narrows the list to these five options:

Event #6 - $11 Pot-Limit 5-Card Draw
Event #8 - $11 No-Limit Hold'em
Event #24 - $11 2-7 Triple Draw
Event #26 - $11 No-Limit Hold'em
Event #30 - $11 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo

Two of these games (5CD and 2-7) are about as squirrel-y as they come and are not wise investments of my $11 ticket. That leaves me with either NLH or PLO8. Given that choice, I guess it will most likely be PLO8.

I realize that Stars is trying to cater to a wide range of interests and bankrolls. That's one of the things that makes SCOOP great. It's just disappointing that the WBCOOP prizes (almost 100 $11 tickets were awarded in each preliminary event, I believe) turned out to be of such limited value and utility, given the vast amount of value and utility that Stars got out of all of the links people put on their sites as a requisite to playing in the WBCOOP tournaments.