It's taken two days to get down from a bumper 201 entries to the general nine players within the first Russian Poker Tour event in chilly St Petersburg. Top of the pile sits a PokerStars qualifier:

1. Dumitru Gaina, Moldova, 501,000. The young player is set to grab his chip lead and switch his PokerStars satellite win right into a bumper, $300,000 pay day.

2. Sergei Popyuk, Russia, 302,000. Sergei, a former military pilot from Arkhangelsk, could also be seen as a decent player, but his image obviously worked as he shot down his opponents to achieve the general table comfortable in chips.

3. Sergei Solntsev, Russia, 256,000. Sergei is playing in his home city and looking out to maintain the trophy on home soil.

4. Vadim Markushevsky, Belarus, 256,000. Vadim plays like a web based poker warrior - fearlessly entering many pots, and almost always because the aggressor. What's impressed many, however, have been his ability to read his opponents.

5. Anatoly Ozhenilok, Russia, 203,000. Another player from St Petersburg, Ozhenilok is definitely a cash game specialist. But he's proved here he has quite a tournament game as well, and is asking to get his year off to a flyer.

6. Bulat Bikmetov, Russia, 181,000. Strong and aggressive, but he recognises he has his work cut out here if he's going to boost the trophy.

7. Evgeny Zaytsev, Russia, 178,000.

8. Alexander Pantyuhin, Russia, 76,000. Alex, from Kaliningrad, won a satellite to this event, but was not likely to play the principle event until his friends persuaded him. Now he's in for a shout at a $300,000 title! But he has a mountain to climb as one of the most shorter stacks.

9. Oleg Suntsov, Russia, 64,000. Oleg, who regularly plays tournaments in his home city of St Petersburg, was chip leader after day one, and has made all of it the best way though to the overall table, albeit because the short stack.

There's blow-by-blow coverage of the general at the moment over at our Russian PokerStars blog. Warning! Strange, unreadable language! Instead, you can also like to watch for the English version of the tournament result in this page.

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