PokerStars SCOOP continues with Event #23, an event featuring four-max tables. As usual, three tournaments were played with low, medium, and high buy-ins. Only players looking to open the majority of their hands and play aggressively would do well in this tournament. FlopTurnRiver member, nutsinho, made the final table of the high buy-in tournament and scored its biggest payday. Unfortunately, he was unable to pull out a win.

PokerStars SCOOP Event #23 – Low Buy-in ($27)
The low buy-in tournament cost players $27 to enter. This small buy-in attracted 10,253 poker players which created a stunning $263,075 prize pool. The top 1,400 players in the tournament would take home a piece of the pie with the champion winning $25,439.50.

The final four looked as follows:
Seat 1 – marodon – 25,758,023 chips
Seat 2 – capeta333 – 3,131,662 chips
Seat 3 – Faaalk – 8,499,588 chips
Seat 4 – saadleb – 15,225,727 chips

There was a break in the action for all four players to discuss a deal. They finally came to terms on a deal that would set aside $2,000 for the eventual champion.

Faaalk ran over the final table and built up a chip stack of 24,435,890. Marodon and Faaalk were left heads-up with marodon at 28,179,110 chips. Eventually, Faaalk built a 4-to-1 chip advantage. In the last hand of the tournament, both players ended up all in. Faaalk held pocket jacks while marodon was hoping to pull an ace with his Ah4h. Unfortunately for marodon, neither the ace nor the flush came on the 7d4s3s6h9c board. Marodon busted as the runner-up but left with the most money ($20,165.18). Faaalk won the tournament but was only awarded $12,676.12 due to the deal previously set.

PokerStars SCOOP Event #23 – Medium Buy-in ($215)
A total of 2,205 showed up to play the medium buy-in tournament of SCOOP Event #23. The prize pool of $441,000 more than doubled the guarantee of $200,000. As expected with the format, the tournament sped by quickly. It only took five hours for the 2,205 number to dwindle down to 200 and another five hours for the final five to be reached. The final table began with five players to avoid an imbalance of players. It looked as follows:
Seat 1 – forhayley – 2,228,010 chips
Seat 2 – LFmagic – 1,534,775 chips
Seat 3 – pkrbt – 894,617 chips
Seat 4 – wywrotX – 1,871,262 chips
Seat 5 – swordfish007 – 4,496,336

The final table boiled down to forhayley from Russia and LFmagic from the United Kingdom. Both players eventually got it in with forhayley holding QcTs and LFmagic holding AsJd. The 8h5sKhAdJc proved to be a miracle board (and river) for forhayley as he caught a rivered straight. The huge cooler sent LFmagic to the rail with an extra $41,511.33 sent to his account. Forhayley won $68,125.68 for his first-place finish.

PokerStars SCOOP Event #23 – High Buy-in ($2,100)
FlopTurnRiver member, nutsinho, made a deep run in the feature tournament. A total of 390 players agreed to pay the $2,100 buy-in which created a $790,000 prize pool. Nutsinho entered the final five action with the largest stack at 150 big blinds. A deal was struck at the final table giving nutsinho most of the money. The rest of the players would have to play for the SCOOP title, watch, and $6,000 leftover for the eventual champion.

Nutsinho was knocked out when he called an all-in bet with a flush draw against the flopped straight of pistons87. @nutsinho commented on Twitter:

Chopped the $2k 4-handed scoop for $107k as the chip leader when we were down to 5. Finished 3rd so I missed out on some street cred

Pistons87 finally took the tournament when he won a flip with AcTs against g.karolis’ pocket nines. The paydays were as follows:

        Pistons87 – $106,336
        g.karolis – $100,308
        nutsinho – $107,054
        JRADF79 – $89,009
      AaronBeen – $76,504