Russian Chess Prodigy Making Waves At WSOP 2010

Former chess prodigy from Russia, Vladimir Schmelev has been making quite an impact at this year’s World Series of Poker, and has already cashed in three events for a total pay-out of $1,082,823.
The St. Petersburg resident has been playing poker in his spare time since 1995, but his first real taste of live tournament success came in 2006 when he won the $200 buy-in East Europe Poker Championship, and collected $23,000 for his victory.
Prior to this year’s competition, Schmelev has enjoyed only moderate WSOP success, and cashed twice at the 2007 WSOP, coming 2nd in the $5,000 World Championship Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better event for $12,502, and 6th in the $1,000 S.H.O.E. event for $20,793.
This year, however, Vladimir Schmelev started his campaign in dramatic style and very nearly took down the $50K Player’s Championship, but narrowly lost to  Michael Mizrachi heads-up. Despite getting his money in on the final hand badly dominating Mizrachi’s Qs-5c with his Qd-8s, a 5h on the turn handed his opponent the victory, but Schmelev still walked away with his biggest score to date of $963,375.
Since then, Vladimir Schmelev has continued his impressive run and finished 7th out of a field of 150 players at Event #10: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship for $55,991, and 7th out of 170 players at Event #15: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship, for $63,457.
Showing no signs of slowing down, Vladimir Schmelev has his sights firmly set on gaining further WSOP glory and along with Vitaly Lunkin, Ivan Demidov, Kirill Gerasimov and Alexander Kravchenko, forms a formidable contingent of dangerous Russian poker pros at this year’s event.