PokerStars is curious about many quality live tours world wide. The ecu Poker Tour continues to wreck new ground, while the LAPT and APPT have both established themselves nicely in recent times. This year the ANZPT tour kicked off, and in January the primary ever PokerStars-sponsored Russian Poker Tour event was held in St Petersburg.

The RPT was an instant success, and it seems like the second one and final event of the primary season, within the capital Moscow with a $7,000 buy-in, could be even better. Some 206 players sat down for Day 1 yesterday, enough for the organisers to tag an additional day directly to the development to verify a gradual and fair structure. PokerStars qualifiers were joined by a powerful choice of Team PokerStars Pro, include local favourites Alex Kravchenko and Ivan Demidov, and Katja Thater and Chad Brown.

Katja Thater

Only Vanessa Rousso, still on a high from winning the EPT Monte Carlo €25K High Roller event, didn't make it through to today's Day 2. The 2 Russians (Demidov is huge in chips), Brown and Thater fared better and can be back on the felt today. Overnight chip leader was Sergey "gipsy" Rybachenko, who managed to show his 15,000 starting stack right into a healthy 76,000. Of the 206 starters, 122 made it in the course of the day.

How's your Russian? If it's better than ours - and that wouldn't be difficult - then you definitely can make amends for the most recent news from our colleague Pavel Sychev over at the Russian PokerStars Blog. If you cannot read Russian, one could have a look and marvel on the weird letters - and luxuriate in the pictures, of course.

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