Records broken, new Team PokerStars Pros and the hunt for the best looking trophy in poker.

Macau is gearing up for another legendary Red Dragon event.

The 23rd edition of the Macau Poker Cup has seen the City of Dreams poker room buzzing over the last week and things are guaranteed to continue with the Red Dragon kicking off on September 5th.

This feature tournament is the highlight of another action packed 17-day festival at PokerStars LIVE Macau. For a buy-in of HK$12,000 and with a HK$5,000,000 prize pool guarantee it's easy to see why the Red Dragon is notorious for attracting huge fields.

Luckily Macau is already well acquainted with impressive player numbers.

The first three events of this Macau Poker Cup's opening weekend saw 854 hopefuls pull up seats and play for HK$2,808,441 in prizes. Almost half of those entries can be attributed to the record field of 353 players in the recent Baby Dragon event, where China's Xiang Rong claimed the crown and took home HK$1,849,014.

Now that the Red Dragon is set to begin, even bigger crowds are expected to flock into PokerStars LIVE Macau. Time will tell if numbers surpass last season's field of 987 where China's Yuguang Li did the unthinkable by winning the Red Dragon event for HK$1,848,000 before jumping straight into the High Roller and taking that down too.

Among the field this week will be the two new additions to the PokerStars Team Pro roster, Taiwan's Chen-An Lin and China's Yaxi Zhu. Both are popular players with stellar resumes throughout the region and will undoubtedly help to build poker in Asia and across the globe.

They're in good company with other Team PokerStars Pros from Asia including Bryan Huang, Celina Lin, Vivian Im, Aditya Agarwal and Kosei Ichinose.

Zhu and Lin will be sporting the Red Spade for the first time here in Macau and looking for a deep run and a big score in the Red Dragon. Fellow Team Pro Celina Lin has dominated the Red Dragon in the past and Zhu and Lin will be hoping to follow in her footsteps.

The Red Dragon isn't all about Team Pros, however, as players from all around the region look to claim their own piece of Asian poker history.

The tournament includes four Day 1 flights so players and staff are strapping themselves in for a busy yet exciting week of poker. Running from September 5-11 we'll ultimately see a new champion emerge next Friday.

Play officially commences Saturday from 6:00pm local time with the Red Dragon's Day 1A. Be sure to stay with us here at the PokerStars Blog to follow along live from this edition of the Macau Poker Cup.

The PokerStars.net King's Cup is back in the small town of Rozvadov, located near the Czech and German border. The popular King's Casino, regular Eureka Poker Tour host, is once again sharing forces with PokerStars to provide an action-packed 16-event festival running from September 3-6. This time, all tournaments are scheduled in a turbo format, creating a unique Turbo Edition.

The flagship €200,000 guaranteed €330 Main Event kicked off tonight with Day 1a with 83 entries (78 unique players + 5 re-entries), including EPT7 Vienna runner-up, Team PokerStars Pro Martin Hruby. The players started with 25,000 chips and after fourteen 20-minute levels only 26 players survived.

Hruby didn't make it to day 2. At the end of level 13 (1,200/2,400/300), Michael Bauer from Germany raised to 6,200, Hruby went all-in for his remaining 20,000 chips with [qc][tc] and got called by Bauer with [ah][qh]. The board came [2c][8s][3d][qd][jh] and the Team PokerStars Pro from Czech Republic was eliminated.

Day 1a chip leader is Regnhard Hermansen from Denmark with 162,000 chips followed by Boris Tapelzon from Russia with 155,000. Day 1A survivors include Ali Sameeian (71,600 chips) from Germany, who finished third in the Estrellas Barcelona Main Event in 2013 for €158,475.

There are four starting days in total (1b and 1c on Friday, 1d on Saturday) with one optional re-entry per flight, meaning the players are allowed to fire up to eight €330 bullets in the Main Event. And we expect a lot more players on Friday and Saturday with over 70 qualifiers who earned their Main Event seats via PokerStars online satellites.

Day 1A chip counts:

I have a great job. I have the privilege to work with charities around the world that help to make a difference where it's needed the most. PokerStars gives back to communities because it believes it's the right thing to do, not for a pat on the back: it's simply part of who we are as an organisation. In 2013, we created Helping Hands, our corporate giving programme, to bring all the great stuff we do together under one umbrella. (You can see some of the long history of our giving here.)

So when we were invited to work alongside Team PokerStars Sportstar Neymar to help raise money for the Neymar Jr Institute, an education and sporting complex built for underprivileged children, it felt natural that Helping Hands should support it. And I'm glad we did.

Last month, we took a trip to Sao Paulo, the home of Neymar and also the home of the Brazilian Series of Poker (BSOP) to host a charity poker event for Neymar. He invited us to take a trip to his institute to see the good work it does, which will be even more good work with the $100,000 that Neymar's Charity Home Game raised.

An oasis in the middle of a deprived area of Sao Paulo near where Neymar grew up, the Neymar Jr Institute opened in 2014 and sees more than 2,000 children through its doors every week.

Funded entirely by the Brazilian football star (with some help from sponsors and charity poker tournaments...) and built on derelict ground where he used to play football, the institute is an incredible place. It's an educational haven where children are encouraged to be the best they can be. Or, in the words of Joel , the director of operations who showed us around, they want to bring out the Neymar in everyone.

Whether they are an artist, a swimmer, a writer or a footballer, children are given a chance to be something. There are few greater gifts that can be granted. The institute has created a place that allows children the chance to be inspired, nurtured and valued, and hopefully it will be able to continue that for generations to come.

Sue Hammett is the Head of Corporate Giving for PokerStars.

It's almost that time of the year again, WCOOP is upon us and as always PokerStars is offering a little something for everyone. All the different formats are represented and the buy-ins span from $109 and all the way to a $51,000 Super High-Roller.

Every time there is a big tournament series like this some of the best stories to come out of them are the underdog stories of people that satellite their way into events for a fraction of the buy-in and manage to turn it into a huge payday.

Ready to sign up for PokerStars? Click here to get an account.

I feel like a lot has already been written about how satellite strategies differs from normal tournaments or cash games (remember you don't need to win all the chips to win!), so instead I decided to use this blog to take a look at the different kind of satellites that are offered for WCOOP so you can figure out which one best suit your bankroll and style.

Deadline Satellites

In my opinion these offer some of the best value of all the satellites. Most of them start about an hour before the target tournament and guarantees a huge amount of seats (usually around 5-100, and often end up generating even more). They are offered at different buy-ins but usually they cost around 1/3 of the price of the tournament you are trying to qualify into. If that sounds a bit too steep don't worry though, there will also be plenty of sub-satellites so you can win your way into the Deadlines for less money. These are the satellites that I would recommend first for most people, the only thing to keep in mind is that by the time the satellite ends the WCOOP tournament will have started so you can't unregister and just take the Tournament Dollars.

FPP Satellites

If you don't feel like investing any too much of your bankroll trying to qualify but have some extra FPPs lying around this is the perfect option for you. The FPP buy-ins span from just 1 and all the way to 100,000 and are always fast tournaments either in the turbo or hyper format, and essentially there are two different kind of FPP satellites. The first ones are normal satellites where winning immediately gives you a seat into the tournament, the other ones are Mega-Paths where you can start on as little as round 1 satellites for 1 FPP and are trying to win your way to round 8 where you can win a $5200 Main Event seat. You can buy-in and start at any round that you want to though so it's mostly just a question of how much time and FPPs you want to invest.

Actually I remember winning a PCA package in a similar tournament where one of the qualifiers got in for 16 FPPS, so it's definitely possible!

Turbo Rebuys (2x,3x turbos)

These games are some of the most popular satellites and perfect for people who like to win a seat fast and play a tournament that includes lots of gambling and a really fast structure. They run pretty much 24/7 and always end up generating multiple seat to any tournament. My biggest tip if you want to play these is to make sure you are willing to keep on rebuying. The add-on usually offers more chips than the rebuy so there is a big reward if you can hang in there. For that reason I would recommend being willing to spend at least ten units in these games ($10 for a $1r 3x for example)

The Rest

There are plenty of other satellites as well. There are the Hyper Deeps that starts out 500 Big blinds deep and then later turns into turbos, just Deepstacks that starts out with 500 Big blinds but never turns into turbos. If you are just looking to play a quick SNG and don't want to wait for a scheduled sattelite to start there are Hypers as well and regular Step Tournaments where you can win tickets for $215, $700 and $2100 events. As we get closer to WCOOP I am sure even more satellites will be added but hopefully this little guide will help you decide which kind best suits you.

Have fun and remember, I wont Million!

It's been a long time since PokerStars added to its Team Pro roster, so today, it signed up two Asian powerhouses on one day.

Chen-An Lin from Taiwan and Yaxi Zhu from China are both popular and successful poker players in Asia, and today, they put on their red spade patches to make it official.

Ready to meet them? We have all you need to know.

Want to join them at PokerStars? Click here to get an account.

CHEN-AN LIN

Taiwanese native Lin discovered poker in 2009 and almost immediately decided he wanted to become a professional player. He chalked up his first tournament victory - a side event at the Macau Poker Cup - in October 2009 for HK$15,000, before enjoying a string of cashes and wins in events in Asia over the next few years.

His largest cash to date came in the Macau Poker Cup in August 2014, when he won the HK$20,000 NL Hold'em event for HK$380,700 (approx. USD $50,000). Earlier this year he won two tournaments in Las Vegas - his first cashes outside Asia - and continues to progress as a player. He wants to use the sponsorship opportunity to promote the game in his home country of Taiwan.

YAXI ZHU
A former finance and business manager, Zhu entered poker from a career at a consulting firm, bringing her analytical skills to the game and impressing almost straight away. Last year saw the Chinese pro enjoy two tournament wins, one in Macau at an ACOP Platinum Series III side event and the other in an EPT 11 Prague side event for €119,100. To date she has earned more than USD $230,000 playing live tournaments.

MACAU POKER CUP

You will find two new Team Pros at the Macau Poker Cup over the next two weeks. MPC 23 runs until September 13 with 16 Official Asia Player of the Year tournaments, including the HK$5,000,000 guaranteed Red Dragon event (Sep 5-11), which has a HK$12,000 buy-in.