Russia is famous for many things, billionaires, vodka, Lenin and fit women’s tennis players to name but a few, but up until now we have not heard much about their poker.

That is all changing however, after online giants PartyPoker staged Russia’s largest ever poker tournament in St. Petersburg in in May 2006, with a whopping $500,000 prize pool on offer.

The event was held at the Golden Garden Casino and was won b 27-year-old poker professional Peter Vlasenko.

Valsenko netted $84,000 for his troubles after four days of highly competitive tournament play. The tournament director for the event was the well respected Thomas Kremser.

Peter, who plays online under the name Peter_Russ 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 the biggest win I have had in a single day by far though I once won $30,000 in 24 hours online.”

Runner-up was veteran Russian pro Mark Vronskiy, a 43 – year-old pro from Moscow whose pocket threes failed to beat Peter’s pair of eights, which he hit on the turn.

There were plenty of foreign competitors in the tournament but the final table featured five Russians and British 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 35 players who qualified online for the tournament through PartyPoker.com, the top finisher was 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 for absolutely nothing through freerolls. Amongst them were players from the US, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Ukraine, Norway, Russia and the Netherlands.

PartyPoker.com spokesman Warren Lush said: “We’re delighted to be involved with an event that boasted the biggest prize in Russian poker history and 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.”

1 – Peter Vlasenko – Moscow - $84,000
2 – Mark Vronskiy – St Petersburg - $46,000
3 – Nikolay Losev – Moscow – $25,400
4 – David Rudling – Essex – UK - $20,300
5 – Sergey Feklisov – Moscow - $15,200
6 – Sergey Pevzner – St Petersburg - $12,700

(All Russia unless stated)