LAS VEGAS - When Jeff Madsen called home to tell his parents he won an event at the World Series of Poker, he didn't mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars he'd collected.

Instead the 21-year-old college student, whose family staked his entry fees, talked about the piece of jewelry given to event winners, a prize that confers fame, respect and even fear at the felt.

"He said he got his bracelet. So yeah, it just tells you the kind of kid he is," said his mother, Harriet, in Los Angeles. "The bracelet to him represents everything."

World Series of Poker bracelet winners are among the few in the world who can claim to have mastered an art and, nowadays, a growing profession.

For multiple winners it stands as proof that poker is much more than just the luck of the draw.

"To me, the bracelets have always been a really huge deal, to me more than the other guys, because I knew that they represented history," said Phil Hellmuth Jr., who won his 10th early Wednesday. "This is how they measure greatness."

Hellmuth's win over 1,690 players in a no-limit Texas Hold 'Em event placed him in a tie for most bracelets ever won with poker legend Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson, who won his first two bracelets in 1976, and Johnny Chan, who began his winning run in 1985.

Bracelets are to poker players what Super Bowl rings are to NFL stars and majors are to golfers - barometers of success against the best competitors in the world.

And they've become more valuable over time.

The first World Series of Poker winner in 1970 got nothing but the cash in the game. A year later, organizers added a "corny trophy," said Becky Behnen, the 61-year-old daughter of the event's founder, Benny Binion, who started the tournament at what was then Binion's Horseshoe hotel and casino.

In 1975, winners received sterling silver plates - Billy Baxter, a seven-time event winner, has one.

The next year, the Binions gave out bracelets for winning the main event as well as the various other poker games played in the days leading up to it, Behnen said. That year Brunson beat 21 players in the main event to win $220,000.

"The band looked like gold nuggets kind of hammered flat," she said.

Las Vegas jeweler Mordechai Yerushalmi, 60, began making the bracelets for the tournament in the 1980s and continued until Harrah's Entertainment Inc. bought the rights to it in 2004.

"Gold was lower, too, at that time, so I think that they probably started at about the $500 price," he said. The winner of the now-famous $10,000 buy-in main event received a bracelet encrusted with diamonds.

"With the diamonds they went up to about $5,000," he said.

But the bands then still didn't have the cachet they have today.

Brunson said when he won in 1976, "it didn't mean anything to me." Then he began winning more.

"I didn't even go pick two of them up because they didn't have any real significance before. And I gave the rest of them away to family members. I've got one bracelet, the one I won last year."

Hellmuth gave nine of his 10 to family members, and keeps only the main event bracelet from his 1989 win.

Chan keeps his in a vault. It's not the value of the jewelry itself, he contends, but the recognition that goes with having the most.

"If you've got 10 gold bracelets, you're the No. 1 player in the world and you get the opportunity to get a lot of endorsements," he said.

How much are they worth? "Millions, millions, yeah."

Not only are today's bracelets worth more in material, they're tougher to come by.

This year's 44 event winners receive bracelets of 14-karat gold rope chain and a center plate with 66 diamonds - but often have to plow through fields of 1,000 or more to win.

"These tournaments get harder and harder," Brunson said. "You've got to be very lucky to come down through these fields these days because there's not only so many players, there's so many good players."

The winner of this year's main event, which started Friday and runs through Aug. 10, will have to conquer a field of 8,000.

The top prize, aside from an expected $10 million, is a bracelet with 120 grams of white and yellow gold, 7.2 carats of diamonds and 259 stones, including rubies for the heart and diamond suits, a sapphire for the spade and three black diamonds for the club.

"Based on feedback from players today, the bling is the thing," said Ty Stewart, the director of marketing for Harrah's sports and entertainment division. "It had to be bigger and better than ever."

Brunson said he got a look at the piece "and it is awesome."

"Whoever gets that, they won't be giving that away."

Jeweler Jonathan Goldman, the chief executive of this year's bracelet-maker, Frederick Goldman Inc., refused to say how much it cost to make.

"It's priceless. There's only one."