Las Vegas, NV (June 18, 2011) -- When communism collapsed and the Iron Curtain disintegrated some twenty years ago, many observers wondered about the impacts of half a billion people suddenly being jolted by the culture shock of having to compete with the rest of the free world for the first time.Repressive governments disintegrated. Walls crumbled. Flags of freedom waved. Suddenly millions of people living in more than two dozen countries controlled their lives and made their own decisions -- about everything. Eastern Europeans and citizens of the former Soviet Union were allowed to travel freely and were granted access to the influences and attractions of the West.A few years later, when poker’s tentacles began branching out into Europe, the game knew no boundaries. Poker didn’t just stop when it reached England, France, and Germany. Poker expanded further and continued to spread East.
Young people, who had previously grown up confined to watching mind-numbing state-run television and playing conventional board games like chess, were suddenly bombarded with flashy images of an exciting new game called poker. The game began to appear on satellite network feeds beamed into cities from Prague all the way to Moscow. Adoration of the iconic chessmasters such as Kasparov and Karpov was displaced by Ivey envy and Negreanu worship.
Then, there was the Internet revolution. Access to online poker games, breaking tournament news, and strategy discussions in different languages accelerated the infancy and inevitable maturity of poker to nations and people who likely would have never been exposed to the game if under the same confining rules of prior generations. Online poker sites began to attract thousands of new players from countries with names that many of their opponents wouldn't be able to locate on a map. Players with screen names like “Krzysztof” from Kazakhstan began bad beating the hell out online pros from Leeds to L.A.The old proletariat might as well have pawned their old hammers and sickles for cards and chips. Hungary, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and twenty more nations once famously referred to by one former U.S. President as "the Evil Empire" had more young people playing poker than were once enrolled in the Marxist-driven Young Pioneers. Inevitably, some of these players starting winning. A few players starting winning really big. Two poker players saw the dynamics of a new age around them. Both got caught up in the craze. They started playing the game everyone seemed to be talking about. One of the players lived in the Ukraine. The other player resided in Romania.The idea that a poker player from Kiev and another from Bucharest would be playing heads for a gold bracelet at the World Series of Poker would have been unthinkable just a generation ago. Now, it’s treated as rather ordinary. Such is the astronomical growth of the WSOP abroad and the universal magnetism it holds of millions of poker players.On the night of June 18th, Ukrainian poker pro Oleksii Kovalchuk defeated Romanian engineer Ionel Anton in heads up play and won the $2,500 buy-in Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em championship at the 2011 WSOP. Kovalchuk collected whopping $689,739 for first place. He was also presented with the famed WSOP gold bracelet, which symbolizes the game’s ultimate achievement. Kovalchuk becomes the second player in history from the Ukraine ever to win a WSOP gold bracelet. The first Ukrainian to win was Eugene Katchalov, who won the $1,500 buy-in Seven-Card Stud championship just two weeks ago. The runner-up Anton had nothing to be ashamed of either. He became the highest-finishing Romanian player in WSOP history.Some day, other repressive regimes will collapse. Evil dictators will fall. People of all ages will be liberated. Just as before, hundreds of millions of a new generation will covet exciting new opportunities. For the first time, they shall gain access to the most appealing activities the world over, which will inevitably include poker.It wasn't too long ago that a Russian poker player first won a WSOP gold bracelet. That occurred in 2006. Now, five years later, not just one, but two Ukrainians have won victories at the 2011 WSOP. All this begs the question. How long before the WSOP crowns a Chinese champion? Or, a North Korean champion? Can a Libyan world poker champion be in our future?
Whether it's politics or poker -- more revolutions are coming.
For a comprehensive recap of Event #26, please visit WSOP.com.