Last Sunday saw the eagerly anticipated SCOOP Festival finally get underway courtesy of PokerStars, and already there have been over 70,000 participants and nine winners. The online poker festival is counted as one of the most popular online events of the year with the action smiling on both the plucky underdogs winning big in the low buy-ins and the gameÂ's high end pros, showing their pedigree in the high-stakes events.

Two winners were MTT specialists Benny Spindler and Paul Volpe, who earned their titles by taking down Event #1 and #4 respectively. Spindler took the $2,100 No Limit HoldÂ'em 6-max event after besting a total of 848 runners and picked up $301,040 in the process.

Phil Volpe denied Shaun Deeb heads-up to win the Event #4Â's high buy-in finale and top prize of $34,780.

New players can get involved with SCOOP action at PokerStars. They can even sign up using the code FREE20 and receive free play. Check out http://www.pokerstars.com/scoop for more details.