St. Petersburg Open winner

There was plenty of foreign interest in Russia's biggest ever poker tournament.

Poker professional Peter Vlasenko has been crowned the Poker Tsar after winning $84,000 in the inaugural PartyPoker.com St. Petersburg Open in Russia last week. The event at the famous city's Golden Garden Casino boasted the biggest prize pool in Russian poker history, with over $500,000 up for grabs over four days.

Peter, 27, who plays online under the name Peter_Rus, was more Peter the Great as he swept aside the challenges from hard-nosed pros from around the world and was delighted with his win. "I normally only play high-stakes limit games online and this was my first tournament of this kind," he said. "This is by far the biggest win I have had in a single day, though I once won $30,000 in 24 hours online." The runner-up was veteran Russian pro Mark Vronskiy, a 43-year-old from St.Petersburg, whose pocket 3s failed to beat Peter's pair of 8s, which he hit on the turn.

Peter is encouraged by the rise and rise of the Russians in the poker world, something that also impresses veteran pro and World Series of Poker bracelet holder Mel Judah, who was in attendance. He has played a lot in Russia and insists that in the future they could take the game by storm. "Poker has come on leaps and bounds. I can see the Russian players becoming a real threat in the future, just like Scandinavia is now. At the moment, a lot of the players don't have the experience, but that will come."

Despite the high number of foreign competitors in the tournament, the final table featured five Russians and just one British player: Semi-professional David Rudling, a 39-year old IT consultant from Essex, England. David has been on the scene for a while and won £50,000 last year in London's famous poker den in Leyton. Of the 35 players who qualified online for the tournament through PartyPoker.com, the top finishers were Tom Strathoff, a 26-year-old from The Hague in The Netherlands, and Thomas Greaux, a 24-year-old Internet hotshot from Little Ferry, New Jersey in the US. Of the 35 online qualifiers, 14 qualified through freerolls, paying absolutely nothing for their shot at the prize pool. Amongst them were players from the US, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Ukraine, Norway, Russia and the Netherlands.

Most of the players who flew to St. Petersburg all discussed the same issue. As Jon Pallis, an Internet qualifier from The Hague in the Netherlands put it, "A lot of the Russians played very aggressively, but sometimes you just think that because they look like mean dudes around the table and you can't understand what they are saying." The tournament director for the event was the well-respected Thomas Kremser.

PartyPoker.com spokesman Warren Lush said: "We're delighted to have been involved with an event that boasted the biggest prize in Russian poker history, and we congratulate Peter on his win. For the first time in a long time, none of the Internet qualifiers made the final table. This alone suggests that Russia could be a poker superpower in the future."

RESULT - PartyPoker.com St. Petersburg Open Main Event, Golden Garden Casino - May 16/17, 2006. (All Russian unless stated.)
1st - Peter Vlasenko - Moscow - $84,000

2nd - Mark Vronskiy - St. Petersburg - $46,000

3rd - Nikolay Losev - Moscow - $25,400

4th - David Rudling - Essex - UK - $20,300

5th - Sergey Feklisov - Moscow - $15,200

6th - Sergey Pevzner - St. Petersburg - $12,700

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