The very first tournaments of the 2012 PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker, or SCOOP, kicked off on Sunday. Each PokerStars SCOOP contest features three buy-in levels – low, medium, and high – meaning there’s an event for every budget. The kickoff low-stakes event was a $27 No Limit Hold’em Six-Max tournament that nearly tripled its guarantee of $250,000, as over 25,000 entrants turned out to create a prize pool of $638,000.

PokerStars member Blackbeatywalked away with the title and a bounty of $74,000, while PocketFives member estofesto finished as the #2 player on the final leaderboard and officially pulled in $53,000. Blackbeaty had offered a deal heads-up, but estofesto would have none of it, politely posting in the chat, “It’s ok. Let’s play. Thank you for the offer.”

Third place in the low-stakes kickoff SCOOP tournament belonged to Canada’s Mtlboy, whose real name is Rayan Chamas. The $35,000 payday was his largest tracked cash on PocketFives, besting a $30,000 haul for winning the Sunday Kickoff on PokerStars in February. Last August, Chamas won the site’s $162 Sunday Six-Max for $21,000.

A pair of Danish poker players in Lund(pictured) and postenfinished in fourth and sixth, respectively, in the six-max tournament. They both sit in the top 60 in the PocketFives Sortable Poker Rankings for Denmark. Here’s a look at how the final table cashed out:

1. Blackbeaty – $74,008.00
2. estofesto – $53,209.20 (estofesto)
3. zebest_666 – $35,919.40 (Mtlboy)
4. Lundsild – $18,687.02 (Lund)
5. darknikson – $10,737.54
6. posten – $6,788.32 (posten)

The mid-stakes version of SCOOP Event #1 was a $215 No Limit Hold’em Six-Max tournament whose prize pool lapped $1 million. The rich tournament concluded with Heminsley bringing home $123,000 for first place. He was one of two players to bank six-figures, joining the runner-up, com 157, in that department.

Hungary’s tracyerlanded in third place and walked away with $86,000 from the mid-stakes event. The Hungarian’s largest tracked online poker score to date came in 2010 by virtue of winning the PokerStars Turbo $30,000 Guaranteed for $16,000 and defeating three of the top 200 players in the PocketFives Rankings at the final table. The mid-stakes version of Event #1 of SCOOP ended with the following result:

1. Heminsley – $123,868.99
2. com 157 – $116,365.99
3. tracyer – $86,455.69 (tracyer)
4. jonwayne69 – $90,882.55
5. SpeckBasu – $30,748.41
6. mandza17 – $16,269.00

The high-stakes Event #1 finale was still raging on at the time of writing. When the $2,100 No Limit Hold’em Six-Max tournament had 41 players left, the chip counts were as follows:

oncommand – 507,554 (norajean)
Allingomes – 436,374 (Allingomes, pictured)
busto_soon – 414,864 (busto_soon)
Fiskin1 – 329,491
AJacejackAJ – 302,342 (Mutha Flushaa)
StingsHUH – 298,793
FU_15 – 261,608 (fu_15)
E1ephant – 260,108
LukeFromB13 – 252,977 (IWEARGOGGLES)
Tagult – 246,852 (Tagult)

By the way, PokerStars is holding a special freeroll on May 13th at 2:30pm ET for PocketFives readers. It’s a winner-take-all freebie for a $1,050 ticket into the 27th event of the Spring Championship of Online Poker. We’d like to thank PokerStars for bringing this type of value to the PocketFives community. Sign up for PokerStars today.