It’s tough to win one SCOOP event, let alone two. Yet most years someone manages to come along and do the double. So when can we expect our first double winner of SCOOP 2019?
JohnnyPorn is in the hunt on Day 2
It could be as early as today, if Costa Rica’s JohnnyPorn has his way.
Costa Rica’s “JohnnyPorn” has two shots today to become SCOOP 2019’s first double winner
JohnnyPorn won Event #7-L ($22 NLHE, 8-Max, Turbo) yesterday and is still going in two different restarts as of this writing. He’s currently in 9th place with 40 players left in Event #5-L ($22 PLO), which resumed at 2:15 ET today. He’s also in 24th place with 55 players remaining in Event #6-H ($1,050 NLHE, Big Antes), which restarts at 3:30 p.m. ET.
But given that JohnnyPorn is the only opening day winner still left in today’s Day 2 finishes, and that the odds are still against him given the dozens of competitors he has to get past to win a second title, how soon will we likely see a SCOOP double winner if he comes up short today?
Say JohnnyPorn misses…what then?
Roman “RomeOpro” Romanovsky was SCOOP 2018’s first double winner
Between the three buy-in tiers there are 201 events on this year’s SCOOP schedule. That’s a lot of opportunities for somebody to grab two wins. More importantly for our purposes here, it’s also more opportunities for a double win than there have ever been before.
Given how many more events we have on this year’s schedule, how common it is for top players to grind these events throughout the schedule with each passing year, and how many winners take shots at bigger tournaments, it certainly seems likely that we’ll have a double winner sooner rather than later.
In 2018, the past year most similar to this year’s schedule, we had 10 different double winners. The first of them pulled off the feat on Day 4, when Roman “RomeOpro” Romanovsky won the $5,200 Turbo High Roller title in Event #16-H to go along with his victory in Event #2-H.
If that seems a bit early to you, well, there’s a good reason. Historically speaking, it is. Only one other player in the last six years has pulled off the SCOOP double earlier in the schedule.
| Year | Total events | Player | Day/event of double |
| 2018 | 183 | Roman “RomeOpro” Romanovsky | Day 3, Event #16-H |
| 2017 | 171 | Andrey “Gigaloff” Zhigalov | Day 6, Event #22-H |
| 2016 | 165 | Ssick_One | Day 5, Event #18-H |
| 2015 | 138 | Jason Mercier | Day 3, Event #8-H |
| 2014 | 135 | youngblood51 | Week 2, Event #43-M |
| 2013 | 132 | Denis “aDrENalin710” Strebkov | Week 2, Event #37-H |
It also seems likely that any double-clinching win will come in a High-tier event. The fields are smaller, especially in Draw and Stud tournaments, and past double winners’ victories, aside from youngblood51’s Medium-tier win in 2014, have come in those events.
So what you’re saying is…
Put all this data together and a double winner seems not just likely but a near-lock. And given the way these things have fallen in the past, the first one is likely to come before this week is out. Assuming we don’t get news tonight that JohnnyPorn has indeed won a second event, we’re setting the over/under for tournaments with a Sunday finish — Events 18 through 22.