Lower the drawbridge.

It's time again for players to hunt for the illustrious Red Dragon.

Macau Poker Cup 24 is in full swing and now the festival's crown jewel is upon us. It's already been an exciting nine days here at PokerStars LIVE in the City of Dreams and as we've come to expect from this popular series, the opening weekend drew impressive crowds and had plenty to play for.

The HK$6,000 Baby Dragon event took center stage as 346 players generated a prize pool of HK$1,812,348. Ultimately it was Hong Kong's Kwok Chun Lai who emerged triumphant, pocketing HK$421,398 for his efforts. The Baby Dragon was just one of the tournaments that experienced growth in player numbers compared to the same season last year, and APPT President Danny McDonagh thinks it's a sign of things to come.

"It's a solid start to MPC24 with the Baby Dragon seeing a 20% increase from last February's result. We're very optimistic about the turnout for the Red Dragon Main Event next weekend" McDonagh said.

That weekend has now arrived with all eyes on the HK$12,000 Red Dragon which kicks off on February 28 and boasts a HK$8,000,000 guarantee. Last series it was China's Yue Feng Pan who took home the best looking trophy in poker. He overcame a record field of 945 to score himself a hearty HK$2,108,000 and etch his name in Macau poker history.

Running from February 28 - March 4 the Red Dragon will include three Day 1 flights followed by Days 2 and 3 before the the final table is set. That means we will crown another Macau Poker champion come Friday next week.

If the past is anything to go by we'll also have some of Asia's most notable names vying for the championship. MPC23 saw Team PokerStars Pros Bryan Huang, Celina Lin, Aditya Agarwal, Vivian Im and Kosei Ichinose in the mix, as well as new additions to the roster Yaxi Zhu and Chen-an Lin. Most of these players are expected to return for the Red Dragon with many already spotted on the tournament floor over the last few days.

Play begins Sunday from 2:00pm local time with Day 1a starting things off. We'll be bringing you all the action from the felt right here on the PokerStars Blog. Be sure to join us!

Throughout this Team Pro Online week you'll be able to watch the action on various Twitch channels as the Pros themselves provide a player's eye view of the action.

At least 12 Team Pro Online members will be twitching throughout the week. Ensure you don't miss anything by checking the links below.

Team Pro Online on Twitch

Andre Coimbra: http://www.twitch.tv/acoimbrapoker
Tyler Frost: http://www.twitch.tv/frosty_012
Luka Kovac: http://www.twitch.tv/coreysteel111
Randy Lew: http://www.twitch.tv/nanonoko
Katerina Malasidou: http://www.twitch.tv/katerina289
Grzegorz Mikielewicz: http://www.twitch.tv/dawarsaw
Liliya Novikova: http://www.twitch.tv/liay5
Adrienne Rowsome: http://www.twitch.tv/talonchick
Felix Schneiders: http://www.twitch.tv/xflixx_teampokerstars
Mikhail Shalamov: http://www.twitch.tv/innerpsycho/
Jaime Staples: http://www.twitch.tv/pokerstaples
Lex Veldhuis: http://www.twitch.tv/raszi/

Which events?

That leaves the question of which event they'll be Twitching? Check out the list of events below.

Team Pro Online Twitching

In addition to these events, members will also be streaming at the following times:

For everything else you might want to know check out the Team Pro Online Week homepage.

After a busy week wrapping up EPT Dublin, and then today's news that PokerStars will be back in New Jersey within a month, it's a relief to look ahead to what will be a relatively leisurely weekend. I'm kidding of course. The weekend is as busy as ever. Let me explain.

It starts on Saturday. Make that VIP Super Saturday.

As we wrote yesterday, there's something for every PokerStars player, regardless of VIP status, with more than $250,000 to be won including tickets to the tenth anniversary Sunday Million.

Then the weekend continues with the usual array of weekend Majors, which I don't mean to sound like the low-fat option. Quite the opposite as we usually find out first thing on a Monday. We'll have a full report of everything that takes place into the small hours then.

That leads us nicely into next week or as we all it: Team Online Pro week.

You might have noticed the details of this earlier today, with much fun to be had either beating or backing our team of Pros who take things ultra-seriously even though they cannot actually win anything. For them it's about glory and bragging rights so please, make a few dollars from all their hard work. Find the details and the small print on the Team Online Pro Week homepage.

We like to end the week on a high, with not only the news of New Jersey, but an American Poker Award for our photographer Joe Giron.

While writing that post I stumbled on a problem that's probably exclusive to photographers - it's impossible to Google Image Search them. You'll find plenty of their photos, just none with them in them.

So coming up short I figured I'd just pick a favourite "Giron", like this one from the PCA High Roller event in 2011. It features winner Will Molson and his father. We think it easily speaks a thousand words.

An original Giron

Good luck to everyone at the tables this weekend. As always send your comments to us on Twitter: @PokerStarsBlog.

The PokerStars Blog team woke up to some great good news this morning. It wasn't just that PokerStars was heading back to New Jersey, but that the American Poker Awards once again recognised the contribution members of our team have made to the game.

Last year Brad Willis won the Poker Content of the Year award, and this year it was the turn of Joe Giron, a regular photographer for the Blog, whose images at the World Series told one of 2015's biggest poker stories - Daniel Negreanu's run on the WSOP Main Event.

It's not hard to see why.

Daniel Negreanu awaiting his fate at the WSOP feature table last July

The picture that said it all: the moment Negreanu busted

For us, that means he saves us the thousand words his pictures tend to say instead. The moment above, captured seconds after Daniel Negreanu busted 11th in the World Series Main Event, spoke about more than just his elimination, but about the hopes he carried for himself, and for the game in the US.

While Joe was working for the WSOP at the time, we were lucky enough to have access to his work for our coverage. We highly recommend ignoring the words and checking out the pictures from back then to see what we mean.

A photo-journalist in the traditional sense, with a career spent working for major US newspapers as well as in the music industry, Giron captures those moments others seldom notice. Except perhaps on this occasion, so allow us to say we saw this one coming.

A great photographer, a great colleague, a great friend. Congrats Joe.

PokerStars is celebrating 100 million players this month. Today, we talk to an electrician whose life was changed forever by winning a million dollars

Come on, admit it - you've often found yourself daydreaming about winning a million. How would you react? What would you do with it? Would you ever bother working again? Electrician Pete Dolloway had certainly wondered these things, especially on those days when he had to get up at 4.30am only to find his van had been broken into. Again.

Then, one moment changed his life. Firing up his PokerStars account on a lazy Sunday afternoon last October, he entered a $5 jackpot Spin and Go, and minutes later he really was a millionaire.

"Initially I went through a real emotional rollercoaster," he said. "Disbelief was probably the main emotion for me and my family. I immediately called my best friend who did not comprehend what had happened, but he came to mine to check it was all real. I phoned up the client I was due to work for the next day (who is also a personal friend of mine) and told him the situation. He said, 'That's the best excuse I've ever heard for not coming in on a Monday'."

Pete, from Birmingham in England, was one of several big jackpot winners as we celebrated our Spin and Go first anniversary with a series of special million dollar prizes. This was just one of the major moments in PokerStars history we are now recalling as we reach 100 million customers.

Pete continued: "After a couple of hours of mayhem and phone calls, we realized we were due to take our daughter to her dancing awards presentation. We still went, however the whole evening I could not register what was being said - and everyone looked like a dollar sign to me!"

Ah, yes. The money. So much of it, in fact, that advice was needed. "I spoke to four separate financial advisers before settling on one," Pete said. "As a result I have invested about a third of the money with the rest going on property and eventually vehicles.

"To be honest, early on it was very difficult for me and Katrina to come to terms with what happened. It almost felt like a grieving process at first; our old lives dying in a way. We have two daughters who were happy just to get their iPhones. But we have all come to terms with it now and are looking forward to the future."

Those close to him took a while to grasp what had happened as well. "It took some explaining to non-poker friends and family, but a lot of them have started playing on the back of my win," he said.

Pete and Katrina enjoying a sunnier outlook on life after a million dollar win on PokerStars

Pete, who was 37 this week and who plays with the screen name prophethicks, now owns the flat in which he lives, and he has also bought a house that he expects to move into later this year. Mortgage and debt free, of course. Then there are life's little luxuries to be enjoyed. "I went on holiday to Lanzarote before Christmas, and I have trips to Amsterdam and Spain planned for this year - and Australia next year once we have settled into our new home."

And what about work? Did he down tools and never look back? "Well I run my own electrical contracting firm, and I was in the middle of several projects at the time, so I did go back to work to complete them. Now, however, I have dropped to a more part-time basis with a view to stepping away completely within two years. If I had walked away instantly it would have caused chaos for a lot of people. I still have my van (it was broken into twice last year), and I'm waiting until I move into my new home before I buy a new vehicle.

"I can honestly this has changed my life. For the first time ever I have genuine options, and in the long term I'm looking at retiring to Spain. Hopefully within the next five to 10 years."

No doubt you've been daydreaming a little while reading this. Would you be as level-headed as Pete has been? Keep playing at PokerStars and you might get to find out.

PokerStars is celebrating 100 million players this month. See how you can join in the celebration and win some big money here.

Other stories from this series:

PokerStars has the need for speed
Meet PokerStars' longest-serving player of all time
The ghosts of WCOOP
The Moneymaker Boom that almost wasn't
Alexander Stevic and the start of a new era in poker
The PokerStars Sunday Million Two-Timer Club
Smile! You're on Kid Poker Camera!
Biggest poker tournament ever? Check!
So who was that first winner on PokerStars mobile?
PokerStars has the need for speed
'How I took my chance in 100 billion'
PCA players before they were famous