Last week, PokerStars announced the schedule for the fifth annual New Jersey Championship of Online Poker (NJSCOOP) and promised details about the inaugural equivalent in Pennsylvania.

As revealed previously, the Pennsylvania Championship of Online Poker (PASCOOP) will indeed begin on April 4 and offer $2 million in combined guarantees across its events. There will be 100 events in total, consisting of 50 tournaments with two buy-in tiers apiece. The series runs until April 20.

Since NJSCOOP begins on April 11, there are 10 days of overlap between the two series. This would ordinarily make it easy for players to cross between the two states in order to participate in both series. Social distancing measures and travel restrictions due to COVID-19 could make that difficult in this instance, however.

You can find the full schedule for the 2020 PASCOOP below.

PASCOOP bigger, faster, more progressive

The schedule PokerStars drew up for the 2020 PASCOOP closely mirrors its NJ counterpart. Buy-ins start from $5 for the low tier and $50 for the high tier.

There aren’t quite as many large buy-ins in Pennsylvania, however, and the ceiling is lower. For instance, NJSCOOP’s High Roller and 8-Game events have high tier buy-ins of $1,000 and $500 respectively, while PASCOOP’s are $500 and $200.

There’s a one-to-one correspondence between most events in terms of scheduling and game type, and many of the buy-ins line up as well. The main difference between the two schedules is that most PASCOOP events have higher guarantees than their NJSCOOP equivalents.

With $2 million in guarantees, PASCOOP will be PokerStars’ biggest US online poker series to date. That’s still not as much as the $3.5 million that WSOP offered for its online championships in 2019. PokerStars, however, doesn’t have the twin advantages of interstate liquidity sharing and a world-renowned live tournament series pulling in players from around the world.

There are also considerable differences in terms of specific formats. Overall, the schedule for PASCOOP is a bit more varied. NJSCOOP has only 10 PKOs and 11 turbos or hyper-turbos in 48 events. PASCOOP’s 50 events include 17 PKOs and 15 turbos or hyper-turbos.

PASCOOP’s opening weekend also includes one more event each day than NJSCOOP’s — three on Saturday and six on Sunday.

50 Main Event seats up for grabs

The promotions for PASCOOP are also similar to NJSCOOP’s.

There is a Main Event Depositor Freeroll on Sunday, April 19, which will award 50 seats to the following day’s high tier Main Event worth $300 apiece. That’s 20 more than are being given away in New Jersey.

Pennsylvania players also get the same consolation prize as their NJ peers. Anyone busting out of a PASCOOP event without making the money gets a free entry to a $1,000 all-in shootout freeroll. Entry is automatic, and the player doesn’t even need to be logged in for their chance to win a prize.

PASCOOP Main Events have the same buy-ins as NJSCOOP but bigger guarantees. The low tier has a $50 buy-in while the high runs at $300. Their guarantees are $50,000 and $200,000 respectively, compared to $30,000 and $100,000 in New Jersey.

Full 2020 PASCOOP schedule

Here is the schedule for the 2020 PASCOOP on PokerStars: