The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is the most storied and significant poker event in the world. It started in 1970, when Benny Binion, a legendary Vegas pioneer, invited six of the best players in the world to The Horseshoe Casino in Downtown Las Vegas. That year the winner was decided by a vote, but in every year since a tournament has been held to determine who’s the best in the world.

From very humble beginnings, the WSOP is now an unbelievably huge event. Lasting over a month, with more than fifty events and hundreds of millions of dollars in prize money up for grabs, the Series is as good as it gets.

If you want to be considered a world-class poker champion, you simply need to have a WSOP winner’s bracelet. The winner of each tournament gets one (on top of their prize money) and in the poker tournament world, bracelets are how the greats keep score. Here’s a list of the players with the most hardware:

Phil Hellmuth 11
Johnny Chan 10
Doyle Brunson 10
Johnny Moss 9
Erik Seidel 8
Phil Ivey 7
Billy Baxter 7
Men "The Master" Nguyen 6
TJ Cloutier 6
Jay Heimowitz 6
Layne Flack 6
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson 5
Berry Johnston 5
Allen Cunningham 5
Scotty Nguyen 5
Ted Forrest 5
Stu Ungar 5

That’s an impressive list, and you’d be hard pressed to find an all-time great that isn’t on it. Of course, as poker has gained in popularity throughout the years, the fields have grown in size. That makes the prize pools bigger, but it also make bracelets a lot harder to come by.

It’s hard to take down a bracelet in any event, but it’s the WSOP Main Event that carries the most glory and the biggest paycheck. In those early years the Main Event was the only event, and since its inception in 1971 the Main Event has had the same structure: $10,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em. The Main Event is the last tournament of the Series, this year it starts July 3rd.

Only the legendary Stu Ungar, the most talented and tragic figure in poker history, has won three Main Event titles. Few have even won the title twice: Johnny Moss (he was also the one voted as champ in the first year), Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan. (Johnny Chan was featured in the great poker classic Rounders.)

This year marks the 40th annual edition of the tournament. In addition to the regular events (which do vary from year to year depending on popularity), this year there was a special $40,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event to commemorate the occasion. As you can imagine, only the most well-bankrolled players bought in, a relatively small field of 201. It was a tough field, but Vitaly Lunkin, a Russian pro, emerged victorious and took home over $1.8 million in prize money. It was his second bracelet.