PokerStars Announces Russian Poker Tour Events for 2009

PokerStars.com, the biggest online poker site in the world, has announced their plans to create the Russian Poker Tour - the first major tournament series ever for Russia. This news comes shortly after the second place finish of Russian Player Ivan Demidov in the 2008 WSOP Main Event. Demidov is a poker sensation in his country, and claimed multiple times during the World Series that Russia is an up and coming force in the poker world.

The Russian Poker Tour (RPT for short) will kick off on January 25th in St. Petersberg. The Nevskiy pr, Concert Hall Premier will host a $5,000 week long event culminating with the final table on February 1st. The next stop for the RPT will be Moscow, where a $10,000 buy-in event will run from February 22 to February 28.

To help jump start the tournaments, PokerStars is offering a slew of satellites to help players qualify for the big buy-in events. The lowest buy-in satellites are $2.22 buy-ins that qualify players for an $800 direct satellite tournament. There are also other satellite options, including $8.80 tournaments that send qualifiers to a $109 super satellite. Regardless of your bankroll, there is a satellite tournament at PokerStars that will give you a shot at a huge payday in the RPT. To learn more about PokerStars tournaments, or to get a great $50 sign up bonus, head over to our full PokerStars.com review.

PokerStars has also announced the structure of the RPT tournaments, and players will be pleased to hear that the structure is basically the same as most EPT events. Each player starts with 15,000 tournament chips, and levels increase every hour with periodic breaks throughout the day.

This isn’t the first poker series that PokerStars has sponsored. In fact, there are over five different tournament series that PokerStars has a hand in, including the European Poker Tour, the Asia Pacific Poker Tour, and the Latin America Poker Tour. Every one of their prevoius tournament events have seen great success, and we expect the same from the Russian Poker Tour.

You can bet that all of the major Russian poker players will show up to both of these events, including Demidov, Kirill Gerasimov, and Alexander Kravchenko. With an improved economy in Russia, many citizens are finding more time for leisure activities such as playing poker, and as a result of that Russia has really had a big impact on the poker world both online and offline. We expect much more from Russian poker players in the future, so keep your eyes out.