As usual, the first event will be the $565 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em.

The 49th Annual World Series of Poker, the most prestigious poker festival in the world, is about the get underway, and non-stop poker is guaranteed with a total of 78 tournaments running in the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, with the $1,500 THE CLOSER No-Limit Hold’em event ending the series in July.

Last year, Bryan Hollis, a poker dealer from Maryland got the best of the first event, taking home $68,817 prize from the $325,000 prize pool.

The numbers of the 2017 Series are staggering: a total of 120,995 entries participated in the 74 events, from 111 different nations, with 16,814 of them walking away with a paycheck. The average field size was 1,635 but the Main Event attracted 7,221 players, who created a prize pool of $67,877,700 with an $8,150,000 first place money. US professional, Scott Blumstein was the lucky one, to lift the trophy.

The total prize pool for the 2017 edition reached $231 million, which is less than 10% of the $2,732,754,201 ($2.7 BILLION!) prizes in the history of the Series.

Even higher numbers are expected this year, with Super High Roller events like the $100,000 High Roller, the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, the $50,000 High Roller and the $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop.