The deadline to enter our Pick 3 for SCOOP 2026 contest is almost here!
March 1 at 8am ET is the cutoff to select three players to represent you during PokerStars’ Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP).
If those players outperform their rivals during the 25 days of the series, you’ll be off to Dublin, Ireland with a $5K package to play at the Irish Poker Open.
Over the past week we’ve looked into which picks might be underrated, the former SCOOP champs you shouldn’t ignore and the mixed game masters who have what it takes to win any event on the schedule.
So now, with just a day left to make your choices, let’s see who’s up there as the favorite picks of those who have already submitted their teams.
(Still not picked your team? Go do it now — it’s free!)
Most drafted: The Big Hitters
Choosing a team of 3 is fast and super-simple, and has just one restriction: you have to choose one name from the ‘Big Hitters’ and two from ‘The Field’.
Comfortably the most-picked player among the Big Hitters — at the time of writing — is none other than Patrick ‘pads1161’ Leonard.
Patrick Leonard.It’s not tough to see why. Leonard is one of the winningest poker players in SCOOP history with 10 titles to his name, as well as past form as a SCOOP Player of the Year.
Just behind Leonard at the top of the Big Hitters list are two players known by their screennames, ‘king153246’ and ‘FAL1st’. We may not have seen the faces of these online crushers, but we’re very familiar with their names given how often they crop up in discussions of online poker’s regular big winners.
And then, of course, there’s one of the greatest online poker players ever to click a mouse: Niklas ‘Lena900’ Astedt.
And good news for those drafting the man from Sweden: we ran into him at EPT Paris and he’s confirmed that his plans for SCOOP are to ‘play a lot’.
Most drafted: The Field
Just as with the Big Hitters, the number one draft pick among The Field is out in front by some margin as Ben ‘benmiller500’ Miller has earned the backing of a ton of Pick 3 players.
We’ll be honest: we thought Miller might slide under the radar of a lot of people. That’s why our ‘Pick 3 Scout’ Howard Swains tagged Miller as an underrated player who might be overlooked.
As was pointed out, ‘[Miller] won his first SCOOP and WCOOP titles in 2025, and amassed more leaderboard points in the calendar year than Niklas 'Lena900' Astedt, Simon 'C. Darwin2' Mattsson and Benny 'RunGodlike' Glaser over the same period.’
Did Howard give the game away? If so, you can also blame him for the increased interest in Thiago 'tgrigoletti' Grigoletti, who has the 2nd spot on our list of the most drafted players in The Field. Grigoletti’s known for taking on SCOOP events at all buy-in levels, making him a solid pick — and one that’s found his way onto a ton of teams.
There’s a definite gap between the top 4 most drafted players in The Field and the rest, and 3rd spot goes to 'xidix', thought to be the screen name of Bulgaria's Ivan Zhechev. With strong results at all buy-in levels — as well as different poker variants — it’s easy to see why he’s a wise choice (even if it’s not easy to see how to pronounce his nickname).
At 4th is Juan Pardo ‘Malaka$tyle’ Dominguez, a highly successful player capable of pulling off just the right moves at just the right times, such as this gutsy play at the final table of the GGMillion$ when he showed just how to play a monster hand like… 4-high.
You can see exactly how many times each player in our Pick 3 for SCOOP 2026 contest has been selected — and put your own team together — over on our Pick 3 page.
But hurry, the deadline of 8am ET on March 1 is fast approaching!
