The 2010 PokerStars SCOOP features 33 live online poker tournament events in a range of poker stakes and styles, including Holdem, Omaha, 7-Card Stud, HORSE, Razz, Badugi, and others. There will even be heads-up competition going on.

Players can win free entry into certain PokerStars 2010 SCOOP events by participating in the PokerStars satellite qualifiers into the series. Should you not win a free spot in a 2010 SCOOP event, you can buy in direclty for as little as $5.50 (depending on the event).

The event with the highest buy-in is the high-rollers event, with a $10,300 buy-in and a $5 million guaranteed prize pool. The main event happens on Sunday, May 16 and, as with the rest of the 2010 SCOOP events, has three different stakes levels. Buy-in at $109 for a shot at a share of $1 million; buy-in at $1,050 for a shot at a share of $3 million; and buy-in at $10,300 for a shot at a share of $5 million.

The NAPT Venetian runs from February 20 to 25 and will be a $5,000 buy-in event coinciding with the Deep Stack Extravaganza that is held each year at the Venetian Casino as part of the Wynn Las Vegas Wynn Classic Tournament (February 24 – March 17).

Satellites and Super Satellites have been running at PokerStars throughout the past several months for free seats into these events, first the NAPT Bahamas and then the NAPT Venetian. Next up after this will be the NAPT Mohegan Sun at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. With the NAPT Mohegan Sun not happening til later this spring, interested players still have plenty of time to get over to PokerStars and try and satellite their way into the event.

So this latest stake in their claim of PokerStars’ world supremacy is a $1 buy-in $300,000 guaranteed tournament taking place on December 27, starting at 2:45 pm. If PokerStars reaches its minimum of 65,001 players, then this will be the third time in twelve months that the site will have broken its record.

The last one took place in July when 155 countries contributed 65,000 players to printing PokerStars’ name once more in the history books (or the Guinness Book, at least). Before that, last December, PokerStars set the original record for the most players in an online poker tournament at a “mere” 35,000.

The first part is more like a general free-for-all in which a bevy of the biggest name players on Team PokerStars Pro – like Daniel Negreanu, Chris Moneymaker, and this year’s WSOP winner Joe Cada, as well as last year’s WSOP champ Peter Eastgate, and fellow young rising poker star Bertrand Grospellier (aka “ElkY”) – will be everywhere you look on PokerStars: cash tables, tournament tables, Sit & Gos – all of it!

Then at 1 pm and 8 pm ET each Tuesday now til the end of the year, there will be two online poker tournaments called Outlast the Pros, in which the last players standing once all the Team PokerStars have been knocked out of the running splitting a $1,000 bonus added to the prize pool. Buy-in: $11.

It’s called the PokerStars Passport promotion, and it requires performing well on the December Monthly Tournament Leader Board (note that this leaderboard is for tournament play; so cash ring game play won’t help you win a passport). Players in the top 2,000 on the tournament leaderboard come month’s end (and year’s end, for that matter), will have a chance to win. Land in the top 200 on the PokerStars December Monthly Tournament leaderboard and you’ll play in the main event on January 21, 2010 at 2 pm ET to vie for a 1-stamp, 3-stamp, or 5-stamp passport, or some handy cash. Players in the 201-2,000 places will be awarded a second-chance at a passport in one of several consolation tournaments also to be held the same day and time.

Passport stamps may include seat in the APPT (Asian Pacific Poker Tour) and the EPT (European Poker Tour) among others.

And as promised in the headline to this story, PokerStars has made not one but two new acquisitions of late, the second being in the form of a new player signed onto the Team PokerStars pro team. This time it’s Jude Ainsworth of Ireland, known on the site a j.thaddeus. He will, in particular, be assigned to strengthening the Team PokerStars UK & Ireland brand.

Jude was the 2008 winner of the Irish Poker Championship (for €145,000) and the 2009 PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker $10,000 Main Event (for $963,338). December 11 to 14 Jude plays in the UKIPT event in his hometown of Galway.

The new poker tour is called the UK & Ireland Poker Tour (or UKIPT for short). It starts December 11-14 at the Irish Poker Championship in Galway, now also known as UKIPT Galway.

The tour (and respective PokerStars.com satellites) runs through Manchester, Coventry, Nottingham (at the notorious Dusk Till Dawn club), Killarney, Brighton, Scotland, and Dublin, winding up with its finale at the UKIPT London Grand Final on October 2-8, 2010, conveniently also a part of the European Poker Tour event, PokerStars EPT London.

Satellites for all UKIPT events, starting now with UKIPT Galway, run for as little as $2.22 cash, 111 FPPs, or $7.50 or 500 FPPs through the STEPS tournament program. There’s also a PokerStars UKIPT Leader Board with bonus prizes.

Benzimra self-description may be too modest when you consider that he has attended most of the PokerStars European Poker Tour events in the past 2 years. He cashed for $26,110 by taking 6th place at last year’s EPT Budapest and $18,604 for taking 17th at this year’s Rendez vous a Paris Spotlight No Limit Holdem Championship.

Team PokerStars Pro Luca Pagano, meanwhile, made his 5th EPT final table and 12th EPT cash at this event.

* After months of final table players making deals and chopping the pot. one player held out to the brutal end and came out on top. That was one “sumai” who kept the whole $225,000 first prize at the PokerStars Sunday Million for himself.
* The new PokerStars hosted TV show, the PokerStars Million Dollar Challenge, has been airing for a few weeks now, and it has a promising young champion in Reverend Andrew Trapp. That’s right, Reverend. This non-traditional Catholic priest got himself a spot on the show to play for his church and apparently he’s really good, having earned $25,000 already, plus a $100,000 seat against Daniel Negreanu for the $1 million grand prize. In order to get onto the show, Rev. Andy had to beat some 10,000 players in an online tournament (or come in the top 10, really) and then submit a winning video convincing producers to cast him on the show. Looks like they made a good call.

The live Baltic Festival tournament will take place in Tallinn, Estonia from October 28 – 31. The $2,800 Baltic Festival prize package includes the 1,100 Euros buy-in, 5 nights of luxury accommodations at the Swissotel Tallinn (where the tournament is to take place), plus $500 to spend as you like.

In addition to the daily Baltic Festival Freeroll qualifiers, Poker Stars is also running several daily Baltic Festival qualifiers:

* one costing $1.10 and starting at 1:30 pm ET, each awarding 1 seat in the weekly finals
* one costing $22 (running Sundays – Fridays) starting at 2 pm ET, each awarding 5 seats in the weekly finals

Poker Stars is also running $33 rebuy Second Chance qualifiers every Sunday at 1 pm each awarding 5 extra Baltic Festival prize packages.