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According to an official from the local electoral commission, cited by the news agency, Gessen was carrying neither a press card nor accreditation allowing him access to cover the vote.
After his passport and identity had been checked Gessen was released, Ria-Novosti said.
"Keith Gessen explained the reasons for his being in the polling station after it had closed. He has decided now to go to Boris Nemtsov's headquarters to continue his work," a local police spokesman was quoted as saying.
He recalled that under Russian law anyone without official authorisation from the electoral commission is barred from polling stations after they have closed.
The Black Sea city has been placed under the media spotlight since it won a bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Ahead of the games the city is expected to see 12 billion dollars worth of investment.
Nemtsov's campaign said the journalist was the victim of a bureaucratic mix-up.
Late Sunday, a commission official told AFP that the pro-Kremlin candidate was way ahead in voting with four fifths of ballots counted.
Incumbent Anatoly Pakhomov, standing for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party, had picked up "almost 77 percent of votes cast," an official with the electoral commission told AFP.
Nemtsov was running at 13.5 percent in the palm-tree lined coastal resort, where Putin regularly goes skiing.
At the start of the campaign, more than 20 candidates had declared their hand, including a porn star, a ballet dancer, a press magnate and a former KGB agent.
But most gradually dropped out and opposition candidates who remained complained about irregularities including the refusal of local media to run their political advertisements.
According to official figures earlier Sunday, the turnout was about 38 percent of the electorate.
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After his passport and identity had been checked Gessen was released, Ria-Novosti said.
"Keith Gessen explained the reasons for his being in the polling station after it had closed. He has decided now to go to Boris Nemtsov's headquarters to continue his work," a local police spokesman was quoted as saying.
He recalled that under Russian law anyone without official authorisation from the electoral commission is barred from polling stations after they have closed.
The Black Sea city has been placed under the media spotlight since it won a bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Ahead of the games the city is expected to see 12 billion dollars worth of investment.
Nemtsov's campaign said the journalist was the victim of a bureaucratic mix-up.
Late Sunday, a commission official told AFP that the pro-Kremlin candidate was way ahead in voting with four fifths of ballots counted.
Incumbent Anatoly Pakhomov, standing for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party, had picked up "almost 77 percent of votes cast," an official with the electoral commission told AFP.
Nemtsov was running at 13.5 percent in the palm-tree lined coastal resort, where Putin regularly goes skiing.
At the start of the campaign, more than 20 candidates had declared their hand, including a porn star, a ballet dancer, a press magnate and a former KGB agent.
But most gradually dropped out and opposition candidates who remained complained about irregularities including the refusal of local media to run their political advertisements.
According to official figures earlier Sunday, the turnout was about 38 percent of the electorate.
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