Each year in Europe there's a musical spectacular during which countries fight it out to become winners of the Eurovision Song Contest. Some take it more seriously than others, but it surely involves a glittering show wherein 25 nations perform their song, after which the population of 42 countries vote over the phone for his or her favourites. Our US readers could be a little baffled by all this, but they want only know that one of the vital music is excrutiatingly painful and instantly forgettable - but occasionally slightly gem launches a surprising career, just because it did for ABBA with Waterloo back in 1974.

What's all that got to do with the RPT in Moscow? Well it simply so happens that this year's Eurovision showpiece was held last night in an enormous concert venue just down the street from our poker tournament - Norway won, incidentally - yet despite that distraction, the poker provided enough thrills and spills of its own to maintain everyone enthralled.

While the Russian entry didn't fare so well within the Eurovision, its poker players were on fire within the RPT, where they'll make up all nine of the general table! Among them are Team PokerStars Pros Ivan Demidov, who final tabled last year's WSOP Main Event, and Alexander Kravchenko, who came fourth within the same event a year earlier.

Final table seats and chips:Seat 1: Artamonov Sergey - 375,500 chipsSeat 2: Vitkind Dmitriy - 115,500Seat 3: Ewgeny Onischuk - 347,000Seat 4: Goryachev Vyacheslav - 310,500Seat 5: Demidov Ivan - 425,000Seat 6: Kravchenko Alexander - 173,500Seat 7: Shamаrdin Oleg - 805,000Seat 8: Khaustov Alexander - 288,000Seat 9: Lunkin Vtaliy - 255,000

Team PokerStars Pro Ivan Demidov

Day three had seen 36 players get back to minimize to the general table of nine, and under the expert stewardship of tournament director Thomas Kremser, there has been enough play to verify all players had a possibility to showcase their skills over nine hours. There have been still a hurry of early eliminations, with Vitaly Lee, Ilya Burtsev, Kirill Gerasimov, then Alexander Panov picking up their coats. With 27 places paid, the last to depart with nothing was bubble boy Alexey Maslov.

Alsp spare a thought for Sergey "gipsy" Rybachenko - chip leader earlier within the event - who went out in 27th, no less than with a bit cash to turn for his efforts. He was eliminated by Oleg Shamardin on a 8-9-J-7-J board - a 10 for Rybachenko (for the straight) no good against Shamardin's J-9 for a whole house.

Shamardin continued his momentum to take a chip lead into the general table with 805,000. Team Pros Kravchenko with 173,500 and Demidov, who was right down to the felt at one stage but rallied to 425,000, could have him of their sights as they search out the primary prize of 14,323,000 rubles - that's about $445,000.

We'll have a last table report for you later tonight or early tomorrow, dependent on how long the overall lasts. If you happen to can read Russian, or simply need to try to understand what's going on from pictures and using an internet translation tool, then head over to the Russian PokerStars Blog, where our man Pavel Sychev is doing a grand job updating the loads. Warning: letters look very odd.

Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Russian Poker Tour]