High stakes progressive knockout tournaments promise a ton of action and the 2020 PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) Event-33-H: $10,300 NLHE High Roller certainly didn't disappoint in that regard as some of the biggest names of the online and offline world battled it out on the virtual felt.
Nine players fired the maximum allowed three bullets and none of them made it to the money as 15 players out of a field of 117 entries remain with a shot at the $1,170,000 prize pool and the SCOOP title for the eventual champion. As soon as the bubble burst, play ended for the night with a minimum cash of $10,691.40 locked up and $113,785.25 up top.
Andras "probirs" Nemeth only entered once and racked up an impressive bounty of $42,500 so far after a late rampage vaulted the Hungarian to a stack of 7,639,469. Especially the double elimination of Joris "BillLewinsky" Ruijs and "WRUUUUM" from Finland when his ten-nine suited got there to beat aces and ace-king, as well as the ace on the river against the kings of "Black88" cemented the top spot of the Hungarian.
Second in chips is another online legend in Niklas "Lena900" Astedt, who advanced with 5,017,949. Astedt took a bite out of Nemeth's stack at the end before then bursting the bubble and leaving Wiktor "limitless" Malinowski as the last player without a portion of the cash prize pool.
Teun "tinnoemulder" Mulder bagged the third-biggest stack with 3,842,414 and the Dutchman is followed by Christian "WATnlos" Rudolph (2,023,519) and Thomas "WushuTM" Muehloecker (1,867,620). Plenty of other big names have a shot at a SCOOP title such as Michael "imluckbox" Addamo (1,857,154), Chun Lei "SamRostan" Zhou (1,142,099), Sam "SamSquid" Grafton (951,821), Joni "bustoville" Jouhkimainen (781,484), and Juan "Malaka$tyle" Pardo (560,096).
PokerStars ambassador Lex "L. Veldhuis" Veldhuis was among many big names that came and left without much to show for. In the third level of the day, the Dutchman ran kings into aces and caught no miracle. Online wizards such as Laszlo "omaha4rollz" Bujtas, Conor "1_conor_b_1" Beresford, Simon "C. Darwin2" Mattsson, Patrick "pads1161" Leonard, Joao "Naza114" Vieira and Alexandros "mexican222" Kolonias had to settle for some bounty prizes only.
Recent SCOOP champions Mustapha "lasagnaaammm" Kanit, "Passiveaggro", Ilya "Leqenden" Anatsky, Jorryt "TheCleaner11" van Hoof and Talal "raidalot" Shakerchi also all fell victims of the rapid pace eliminations.
Nemeth did most of the work to reach the money bubble and it was then Astedt who held up with kings against the ace-king of Malinowski to let the bubble burst and increase his own chances of winning a fifth title.
Six of the remaining 15 players are below or just above 20 big blinds as the action will continue with blinds of 20,000/40,000 and a running ante of 5,000 when the final day kicks off at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Friday, May 8th, 2020. The PokerNews live reporting team will be back then to deliver the high stakes action en route to crowning the next SCOOP champion.
flop and 
turn kept Malinowski's outs at trey and he missed out on a portion of the cash prize pool when the 
river came a blank. All remaining 15 players are now in the money and on break until 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time the following day.
flop gave "WRUUUUM" and Nemeth a pair and the 
turn opened a straight draw for Nemeth, who instead made two pair on the 
river to score the massive pot and double knockout.
board gave Grafton quads to bust Gieles.
against the 
turn for 311,399.
but Lefrancois had turned two pair with 
, the Canadian even rivered a full house with the 
as the 
board gave Astedt a set of sixes.
flop with 
river.
of Andras "probirs" Nemeth.
of Joris “BillLewinsky” Ruijs and the 
of Pieter "XMorphineX" Aerts as the board came 
.
to triple.
