Old-timers remember how the lowest SnG/MTT buy-in was $5, the highest was $100 and NL1k was the highest available cash game limit.

Before I picked up poker I was a professional Starcraft and Warcraft player with a competitive attitude. If you get third in a big tourney in those games it actually means you are good. I tried to use the same logic in poker: if I finished third in that tournament, I must be a top pro! Time to grind those $100 Heads-Up SnGs, right? Good thing I was able to stop, losing only $800 out of my $1,200 bankroll.

Around this time I found the first posts about ICM, and that knowledge was enough to go from $5 SnGs to $200 SnGs in a few months. Games were that soft in 2005-2006.

Six years ago, you couldn't deposit when in Russia, so I had to start with a $50 transfer from my online friend (hello, NTT!). When my real life friends decided to try poker as well, I did the same - transferring them $50 of my PS money. I told them to be very careful: do not play high, because losing those $50 would have been a disaster. "Don't worry mate. Your money is safe," was their answer.

I had exams and took a few weeks break from online. When I came back I found out that my money was gone and there was a nice little forwarded email in my inbox that read something like this: "Hello, XXXXX. Thanks for contacting PokerStars support regarding your hand #xxxxxxxx. Please be advised that in Omaha you have to use two and only two cards from your hand. You didn't have quads in that hand, sorry."

I wonder how many emails like that PokerStars support were getting daily!

Most of my friends are poker pros now, but as you can see, it definitely didn't come easy.

Follow Ivan on Twitter: @IvanDemidovPS

Ivan Demidov is the form player coming into the final table, having used his break from the World Series to play in, well, the World Series. Demidov returned to Europe after his heroics in Las Vegas and made the final table of the World Series Europe Main Event in London. He finished third, earning more than $600,000, and became the first player to make WSOP final tables on both sides of the Atlantic. He added this notable score to a near-$40,000 cash for 11th place in this year's WSOP $1,000 hold 'em event, and a string of smaller successes, including third in a side event at the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic in 2007.

Demidov is at the forefront of a sensational boom in popularity of poker in his native Russia, alongside the Team PokerStars Pro Alex Kravchenko, who came fourth in last year's WSOP Main Event. Known as "Soul" on PokerStars, Demidov only started playing poker in 2006, but is already a professional and heads to the WSOP Final Table second to chip leader Dennis Phillips, with more than 24 million in chips.

A math graduate from Moscow State University, the 27-year-old cites Kravchenko's success as inspiration for his switch to full-time poker after a prior career as a semi-professional Starcraft player. While he’s not playing poker, he enjoys skiing, white water rafting and scuba diving.

Demidov begins final table play with 24,400,000 in chips.

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Now, Demidov is set to become a superstar in Russia and around the poker world. Here is what he had to say in the moments after making the final table.

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