|
|||||
Former Backgammon Player Champions Russian Poker TourVitaly Lunkin won the Russian Poker Tour (RPT) final table held last weekend at the Hotel Renaissance in Moscow, taking home a check on 14,323,000 Rubles (about 445,000 US$). Lunkin, who used to be a professional backgammon player, outplayed estimated World Series of Poker (WSOP) finalists such as Ivan Demidov and Alex Kravchenko of the Poker Stars team.The main event of the Russian Poker Tour, one of the most important poker tournaments in Russia, was championed by former backgammon player and WSOP bracelet holder, Vitaly Lunkin, who bested his 8 competitors, all of them local players. On the last round, he played heads-up against Vyacheslav Goryachev, grabbing 2,790,000 in chips while his opponent hardly threatening his predicted victory with only 310,000. Vitaly Lunkin is obviously not the first backgammon player who entered into the more lucrative world of poker. He was preceded by Paul Magriel, Dan Harrington, Gus Hansen and many other notable backgammon pros who took their analytic skills to the poker table. As French backgammon and poker player Francois Tardieu taught his protégé and European Poker Tour champion, Arnaud Mattern, playing backgammon trains a player to "play the best possible move and to stay calm and calculated during game".
|
| |||||||||||
