SCOOP 2010 is made up of thirty-three events and boasts a $36,000,000 guaranteed prize pool. Unlike the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (or WCOOP), the PokerStars SCOOP has a tiered buy-in structure with 3 different levels of buy-ins (and respective prize money) for each of the thirty-three events in the series. That makes for 99 events in all, and it gives players of any income the chance to get in on the fun.

PokerStars SCOOP 2010 buy-ins run as high as $10,300 for the high-rollers event down to $5.50 on the low end. Satellite buy-ins run even lower, including many freeroll opportunities to win a shot at a free seat in a 2010 PokerStars SCOOP event.

This will be the first time that PokerStars will be hosting a live poker tournament in a Las Vegas, Nevada casino. The NAPT Venetian Deep Stack Main Event will be an NL Holdem event with a $5,000 buy-in.

PokerStars has been running Super Satellites for $200 and $500 into the NAPT Venetian for the past couple of months, ever since the inaugural NAPT event, the always-successful PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) in the Bahamas. Now, with the Deep Stack Extravaganza right around the corner, PokerStars is next offering Super Satellites into the next, and only other, scheduled North American Poker Tour event, the NAPT Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.

Stay tuned for more PokerStars North American Poker dates in both the United States and Canada as Poker Stars schedules them.

There has long been a Germany event in every season’s European Poker Tour schedule, but in recent years it’s always been held in Dortmund, where last year, Sandra Naukjos, herself a Berliner, took down the main event. But now it’s Germany’s capital that will host this 2010 EPT Germany event. And, as always, it will be Poker Stars hosting the low-cost satellites awarding free seats into the EPT Berlin Main Event. And this year the winner gets a guaranteed €1 million.

Satellites are running for the upcoming EPT Deauville, France and EPT Copenhagen, Denmark over at PokerStars as well.

Win a trip to the Bahamas where you’ll stay at the Atlantis Resort and Casino and bathe in the lap of luxury in between playing alongside some of poker’s finest female players, including PokerStars Pros Katja Thater, Vicky Coren, and Vanessa Rousso. You’ll even get a $250 spa voucher to get you in the right headspace for the game. You also get $900 spending cash and, of course, the $1,000 buy-in to the PCA Ladies Weekend Main Event. The total prize package is worth $3,500.

PCA Ladies Weekend Qualifiers start for buy-ins as low as $2.20.

There are three ways to enter the Dream Job USA competition:

• * through freerolls running daily at 8 pm and 11 pm, each awarding 18 seats in the finals
• through Frequent Player Point events costing 10 FPPs to buy-in, each awarding 45 seats in the finals; plus 3 special events costing 1,000 FPPs to buy-in, each awarding 9 seats in the finals
• and of course, through cash qualifiers, twice daily for $1.10 and twice daily for $11, each awarding 1 seat in the finals

Satellites for the Dream Job USA run through November 28 with the winner decided in a November 29 finals at 7 pm ET. You can skip all the satellite options altogether and enter the finals directly for a buy-in of $109.

There is also a Dream Job Canada contest running simultaneously at PokerStars too.

Now if you want to get nitpicky about it, you could argue that the PokerStars Passport is not a satellite or satellite series at all, since victory depends not on one’s performance in a specific event or “STEP”-like series of events, but a Leader Board that tracks players’ performance in all PokerStars real money tournaments throughout the year.

Depending on your ranking you can win a passport with a certain number of stamps, each stamp good for a prize package to one live event, of your choice. The list of possibilities includes any of the PokerStars Tour events in the European Poker Tour, Latin American Poker Tour, Asia Pacific Poker Tour, Russian Poker Tour, and Australia New Zealand Poker Tour.

Satellite freerolls will be held on Poker Stars’ free, play-money, training site PokerStars.net open to players from 16 countries– Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela + 3 determined by preliminary freeroll–offering the most successful among them a place on their country’s team in the live finals.

Teams have been divided by country into groups that will face-off from week to week. Players attempt to win points for their team by placing in the top 100 in the competition’s freerolls.

At the end of this round, the 8 most successful countries (the 2 with the most number of wins from each of the 4 groups) will fly to a Bariloche, Argentina ski resort for the live finals from September 4 – 6. Players have a second chance at making the finals team too, by being one of the top scoring players during the group stage.

Prize pool is $250,000 and top prize is $100,000.

T$ can be used at any later date to register yourself into any PokerStars tournament or combination thereof. That includes Sit & Go tournaments, special events, and other satellite tournaments too!

You can even enter multiple satellites for the same event and, should you win more than one free seat, have your extra tickets automatically converted into T$ and creditted to your account for later use elsewhere, in some other exciting PokerStars tournament.

Now here are the exceptions:
• T$ cannot be used in cash ring games
• T$ are not awarded in W$ events

Which brings us to W$.

W$ can only be used to register you into qualifying special poker events, such as (but not limited to):
• PokerStars Caribbean Adventure
• World Series of Poker
• PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker
• Asia-Pacific Poker Tour

W$ operate similarly to T$ except:
• W$ and T$ are not interchangeable
• When you win a seat into a W$ event, you must play in that event
• W$ are only creditted to your account for later use if you win multiple entries into the same event or if you win a seat into a satellite for a W$ event and choose to un-reguster from the satellite

PokerStars is running both cash qualifiers and FPP qualifiers, so whether you’ve got the money or the comp points, as long as you have the inclination (and the desire to fly to the tropical and exotic Caribbean to participate in an official European Poker Tour event).

The 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure prize package includes not only a buy-in into the Main Event but hotel accommodations and expense money too. The total prize package is worth $14,300.

In addition to the regular FPP and cash qualifiers awarding entry into the 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, PokerStars is also hosting what it calls “Steps Sit & Go” satellites, costing as little as $7.50 in cash or 500 in FPP credits to enter.

The Steps satellite series consists of 6 stages (or “steps”); 6 tournaments that players can buy into directly or win their way into by winning the step previous. Win the 6th step and win your $14,300 PCA prize package. Lose at any step, and you can still try again at the same step or the one below.