• Kade beat a field of 69,876 players who generated a $13,975,200 prize pool
• Her victory followed public row about Dan Bilzerian
• Huge field shows interest remains high in online poker
• Site unveils SCOOP series, with $100 million in guarantees

Anyone who claims online poker is a thing of the past had better look at what happened over at PokerStars this week.

As happens every year, the world’s largest online poker site throws an anniversary version of its Sunday Million online tournament, widely regarded as the premier weekly online event in the poker world.

This year, nearly 70,000 players showed up at the virtual tables to play and take a shot at the huge first prize and a prize pool that was nearly $400,000 higher than any of the previous 12 anniversary spectaculars.

After two days, it was Canadian player Vanessa “Niffller” Kade who booked her place in online poker history, beating “Talibenes” heads-up to take first place for $1,514,920. The defeated Polish player got $1.035,358, which should more than make up for the disappointment of missing out on the top spot. Unusually, there was no final table deal.

Dan Bilzerian

What makes the winner even more notable is that she is a well-known streamer who recently had a high-profile clash with Dan Bilzerian over his new role as an ambassador at GGPoker, where she was on a sponsor deal. She left and was picked up instead to join the Americas Cardroom ambassadors’ team.

Kade had taken a stand against Bilzerian’s attitude to women, which she said was no way to promote poker.

SCOOP announcement

Meanwhile, PokerStars, now part of Flutter, has unveiled its schedule for this year’s Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP).

SCOOP is a flagship tournament series, like the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP), and this will be its 13^th year.

Headlines for the April series:

• $100 million in guarantees is the biggest yet
• It’s expected the combined prize money will top one billion dollars
• 102 events, each in low, medium and high format, so 306 in total

The series features six showpiece main events, three in no limit hold’em format and three Pot-Limit Omaha.

And if you were worried about the buy-ins, you need not worry. The smallest is just $2.20, while the biggest is a whopping $25,000 in a Super High Roller event.

SCOOP begins on April 4 and runs through to April 28 – and it’s true to say there really will be something for everyone.