PokerStars is excited by many quality live tours all over the world. The eu Poker Tour continues to damage new ground, while the LAPT and APPT have both established themselves nicely lately. 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 looks as if the second one and final event of the primary season, within the capital Moscow with a $7,000 buy-in, may 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 make sure a gradual and fair structure. PokerStars qualifiers were joined by a powerful number 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, did not 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 during the day.

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

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