Russian Poker Tour Announced

The poker industry is witnessing a boom in Russia at the moment. Ivan Demidov, runner up in this year’s World Series of Poker, is one of the hottest players on the circuit and PokerStars just announced the Russian Poker Tour that will start in the beginning of next year.

PokerStars, one of the few poker rooms allowing US players as well as Russian, has just put two cities on their Russian tour map, Moscow and St. Petersburg. But if these tournaments are successful more events will probably be added.

The St. Petersburg event runs from January 25 to February 1 and the buy-in is set to $5,000. The Moscow tournament runs between February 22 and 28 and the price for entering is $10,000.
PokerStars hosts satellites to these events from now until December 30. Players can win a seat for as little as $2.22 or 111 Frequent Player Points. The satellite players as well as aspiring local talents will probably make these two events the biggest tournaments in Russia.

Up until today, the biggest official tournament ever held in Russia was Moscow Million 2007. In that event, only 53 players participated and Antanas “Tony G” Guoga took home the title and a little over $200,000. It’s not impossible that just the online poker qualifiers will add up to more participants on the Russian Poker Tour.

Poker players have to learn a new abbreviation besides WPT, EPT, APPT and LAPT, and that is obviously RPT.