Norway’s best and brightest poker players are flocking to Ireland for the 2016 Norwegian Poker Championships sponsored by sites like Guts Poker.

For the fifth consecutive year, the series will be hosted at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin, where 75 events will be spread from March 11-20. Players will have their choice of an array of different games and variants, including Limit and No Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Omaha, Eight Game Mix, H.O.R.S.E., Three-Card Super Hold’em and many others.

Players with even the humblest of bankrolls will be able to get in on the action, with buy-ins starting at just €60 for entries into any one of the No Limit Hold’em Turbo events. On the high side, entries top out at €2,000 for each of the Championships’ two high roller events.

The Championships culminate with an €800 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Main Event which will be played out on the 15th. Later that day, organizers will hold a €300 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament for the ladies in attendance. Only Norwegian nationals will have the opportunity to play in the Main Event or in any event labeled “NM” on the schedule.

On the final two days of the Championships, players will have the chance to enter events with some particularly unique variants, like “Pot Limit Inbetweenies”, “Limit Open Face Chinese Pineapple” and something called “Left Right Center Dice Game Shootout”.

“The Norwegian Poker Championships has seen immense growth since its humble beginnings some 15 years ago,” said organizer Frode Fagerli. “From a small underground tournament with merely 100 runners to a full blown poker festival with around-the-clock cash game action, we’ve really come a long way.”

Fagerli is one of the founders of Gaming Innovation Group, which was floated on the Oslo Stock Exchange (GIG). This is the first year his home site, Guts.com, sponsored the event.

Until recently, live tournaments were prohibited in Norway, a wrinkle which forced the Championships to be held outside of the country in places like Ireland, England, Latvia and Sweden over the years.

In 2014, Norway’s Minister of Culture gave an opinion that restrictions on poker events should be relaxed, paving the way for the series to return to its home country.

Last November, the event played out for the first time on Norwegian soil and boasted 1,973 runners, including hometown poker heroes like Johnny Lodden and Thor Hansen. In the end, it was Felix Stephenson, runner-up in the 2014 WSOP Main Event, who took the title along with a $160,000 first place prize. The event was broadcast on national TV and drew an impressive audience of 100,000 viewers.

“I think the atmosphere of the NPC is quite unique,” said Fagerli. “Everybody is having an awesome time and we never have any trouble. Everyone is just one big smile for the whole week. I think it’s one of the most successful events in Europe and I am quite proud of it.”

But organizers aren’t ready to do away with the foreign-hosted version of the Championships just yet. For one, tournament officials have spent over a decade building the popularity of the NPCs abroad and have had great success hosting the event at Citywest in Ireland. The main reason, however, has to do with the continuing limitations of the country’s gaming law.

“The permit to hold the Norwegian Championship in Norway is very limited,” said Fagerli. “The rule says a maximum of three tournaments with a combined total buy-in of 10,000 kroners (about €1,000) are allowed, and no cash games. This permit has only been given for three years, and we do not know what will happen after that.”

He added that moving away from such a robust schedule in Ireland “is not an option for the Norwegian poker community. WSOP has events in Vegas and events in Europe and Australia. We are hosting a championship in Dublin and one in Oslo.”

View the complete Norwegian Poker Championship schedule.