The final table of the RPT tournament in Moscow was an all-Russian affair, and it was former backgammon player Vitaly Lunkin who came out on top, beating a strong field to take home the title and $445,709 in prize money. Some of Europe’s finest players gathered in the Russian capital for the event, which ran from May 11-17 and featured a $7,000 buy-in.

If you happened to be a patriotic Russian looking to support a local player at a big poker tournament, then Moscow yesterday was the place to be. All nine players at the successful PokerStars Russian Poker Tour final table in Moscow were from the home country. And two of them - Ivan Demidov and Alex Kravchenko - were Team PokerStars Pros. Even their experience, both being previous World Series of Poker Main Event final tablists, was not enough to take down this event. Instead, that went to Vitaly Lunkin, a former backgammon player.

His win, good for 14,323,000 rubles - that's about USD$445,000 - was no fluke: he has a pedigree record of his own having won a WSOP bracelet last summer in the 1,500 No Limit Hold'em event. And he used his undoubted talents to go from second last in chips yesterday to champion of the $7,000 buy-in RPT Moscow.