As a consequence of the recent ruling by Russian sports officials that poker should not be considered a “sport”, organizers for the European Poker Tour were forced to make arrangements to relocate the event. They found a welcome host site at the Palace of Sports in Kiev, Ukraine, more than four hundred and fifty miles away from their original site.

In contrast to the ruling by Russian leaders, their Ukrainian counterparts resolved to make poker a sport back in June of this year. Instead of holding the event in a traditional casino setting, tournament organizers are using the same building that has been used for athletic competitions and major touring concert acts. The EPT Kiev Sports Poker Championship is the first major poker tournament ever held in Ukraine.

The recent poker boom in Russia, due in large part to the previous approval of poker as a sport in 2007, has seen a great well of poker talent rise up from the former Communist empire. At the Kiev event, Russian players made up more than forty percent of the player pool in the EUR5,000 (US$7,000) buy-in event. Seven of the top ten chip leaders are either Russian or Ukrainian.

The chip leader after Day 1A is Ukrainian Mihaylo Demidenko with over one hundred forty-five thousand chips, followed by his countryman Oleksandr Ziv with over ninety-eight thousand. 2007 World Series of Poker bracelet winner and Main Event finalist Alex Kravchenko is also in contention. Last year’s winner of the Moscow event, Luca Pagano, was eliminated early on Day 1A.

Out of the one hundred and twenty-nine players that started the day, only ninety-three will go on to Day 2 of the competition. Day 1A is slated for noon (local time) on 19 August, with an expected field of over one hundred seventy players. The remaining players from the first two days will come together for Day 2 on 20 August