Aleksandr Shevliakov

[Aleksandr Shevliakov @AlexShevliakov]

@JamWakil @PokerStars @PokerStarsLIVE @PokerStarsBlog @PokerNews For those who are interested in the full context and my version of the events — I’ve shared it here: https://t.co/y4RxT3XtFg

[Aleksandr Shevliakov @AlexShevliakov]

Hi, my name is Alexander Shevliakov, and this is my message regarding the AKs hand against Jamil Wakil.

I held off posting this immediately because I wanted to speak privately with Jamil first and give him the full version. Now that I’ve done that, I’m sharing it publicly so people can hear the other side.

I’ve already been labeled as an angle shooter, even though no one outside of the Russian-speaking poker community knows my full version of the events. I’d gladly give an interview, but my level of English likely wouldn’t allow me to express my position properly.

Let me start from the end of Day 4 of the Main Event. We were at the same table with Boris Angelov and Stoyan Obreshkov. Blinds were 15k/30k. I opened the button to 60k with K8s. Stoyan 3-bet from the small blind to 185k. We had around 50bb stacks. His sizing looked small to me, and I was deciding between a 4-bet and a call, eventually leaning toward the call. I put my chips out, and — shit — the dealer tells me to add another 100k. “How the hell did I mess this up?” flashes through my mind. A rookie mistake.

Flop comes K64 with no flush draw. I may be wrong, but I think Stoyan bet something like 100k — I call. Pot is about 730k.
Turn is another king. I look at the board — as I often do during hands — and Stoyan says “four seventy-five.” With my hand, it feels like there’s no real option but to call. Sure, there’s a case for raising, but the sizing is large and SPR is low. I figure we’ll get it in on the river anyway. I remove a chip from a tower of 20 x 25k chips and push it forward. Then the dealer says it’s an invalid raise. “Damn,” I think — “you’ve messed up again in the same hand.”

Turns out, Stoyan had said and bet 275k, not 475k.
Please note: two seventy-five and four seventy-five can sound very similar for a non-native speaker, especially after playing 8–12 hours a day for 5 days straight.
They call the floor, explain the raise is invalid, and my action is ruled a call.

River is a low paired card — a 4 or 6. Stoyan checks, I jam around SPR 1. He folds, saying that if my turn action was a trick, he should quit poker. He also said that if I was calling 475k, it’s clear he had a strong range.
Later on Day 5, we discussed the hand — he told me his actual holding and agreed the hand would’ve ended the same way anyway.

I don’t think Boris was fully paying attention to this hand, but it’s likely he saw the sizing confusion or at least noticed something odd.
To me, it’s obvious this situation is completely different from the AKs hand on the final table.

Fast forward to Day 5. Boris and Mariusz were constantly communicating with their rail during the day, getting delayed stream information — around 30 minutes behind — without leaving the table. Phones and smartwatches were technically banned.
I didn’t like the situation — it hurt my EV and the EV of everyone else who didn’t have people feeding them stream data — but it wasn’t against the rules, so I didn’t complain.

Day 6. At the start of the day, I started thinking about ways to hide my cards from the stream to prevent that kind of information from being relayed. I decided not to show one card.
The dealer asked me several times to place the cards properly, and I said I didn’t want to — it wasn’t against the rules.
Around that time, Jamil started objecting, saying I was hiding information and gaining an edge. I told him I would explain my reasoning later — I genuinely didn’t understand why he, who had no one feeding him stream info, was the one objecting.

Then Kokhestani joined in, saying if I don’t show, he won’t either. At that point, the floor came over and made what I believe was a perfect decision — devices were banned from the rail. From that moment, players could only get stream info during breaks — once every two hours. Perfectly fair.

I was fully satisfied and immediately began placing the cards correctly.
Still, I was nervous — I had to explain my position to the tournament director (in bad English), had just clashed with the whole table, and kept replaying the situation in my head.

That happened around minute 41 of the stream.
At minute 43, I check-folded pocket kings (a mistake), with more emotion on my face than when I later won the final hand — a sign that I was clearly not in the best mental state.
At minute 45, I folded 53s and started talking to the waitress — she brought me tea, but I had no cash (our phones were taken). She spoke even worse English than I did. Kokhestani, seeing I was stuck, paid for my tea — that’s on video.

I sat there drinking tea, thinking about where to find €10 to pay him back, whether I misplayed the KK hand, whether the rail situation was fair, how I’d already been playing for 7 straight days, and oh yeah — I’m at the final table of the EPT Main Event and the money is massive.

Next hand — the AKs hand.
Jamil was sitting on the far end of the table. Bright lights were in my face (should’ve brought sunglasses). I finally had my tea. Enrico folded. Mariusz folded. Boris folded. I looked at my cards — AKs — decided to open. I looked at the timer (I usually avoid snap-decisions to not give away timing tells). I grabbed chips and put them out. I announced the raise.
About the verbal announcement — I haven’t reviewed the entire video, but I believe I did this in other hands as well. If this was the first time, I don’t know why I did it — maybe it’s a pattern, maybe a tell. Maybe it’s worth analyzing the previous day for comparison.

Then the dealer told me the sizing was wrong and pointed to Jamil’s raise.
It was only at that moment that I realized Jamil had already raised. I hadn’t seen it or processed it — I was focused on my action, my tea, the timer, and avoiding mistakes.
I didn’t understand what the ruling would be — raise or call — but I immediately realized how bad this would look if ruled a raise.

I had no idea what to do.
And frankly, none of the possible options made any sense:

Folding would look absurd and be +EV suicide

Asking for a re-deal would be ridiculous and not allowed

Asking Jamil to fold to a 3-bet? Nonsense
So I sat there, drank tea, and waited for the situation to resolve.

Jamil made a correct shove but ran into the top of my range. Before revealing my hand, I said “this wasn’t angle shooting” and apologized.

Boris made a comment — half-joking or not — that “this is starting to look like a pattern,” referring to Day 4.
Jamil busted while hearing that. I stood up and tried to apologize and shake hands — he refused. I understand. From his side, with the info he had, it looked dirty.

One more thing about the angle shooting accusation in the AKs spot —
If I were trying to angle shoot, the simpler and more effective way would’ve been to just say “raise” and put the chips out.
Given everything that had happened leading up to that moment, and the stress I was under, it wasn’t even obvious to me within 10 seconds whether 360k would be ruled a raise or a call.

From my side — it was a stupid, unlucky sequence of events and inattentiveness brought on by cumulative EPT stress and the stress of that morning. And now I’ve been labeled an angle shooter.

I’m nearly unknown in the English-speaking poker world.
But in the Russian-speaking community, I’ve had countless friends and colleagues — in both cash games and MTTs.
My reputation has always been clean — no debts, no broken deals, no history of angle shooting.

Jamil let me know that he won’t be commenting on this, and I fully respect that.
For my part, I’m also not planning to continue engaging in this discussion — unless someone directly involved (like Stoyan) publicly disputes key facts.
Otherwise, this is the full story as I experienced it.

That’s how it really happened — no angles, no tricks, just an unfortunate sequence in a high-pressure spot.
Thanks for taking the time to read it.
Aleksandr Shevliakov

@PokerStarsBlog @PokerStarsLIVE @PokerNews @PokerNews_Live @J_Hartigan @Stapes @GriffinBenger

[Aleksandr Shevliakov @AlexShevliakov]

Hi, my name is Alexander Shevliakov, and this is my message regarding the AKs hand against Jamil Wakil.

I held off posting this immediately because I wanted to speak privately with Jamil first and give him the full version. Now that I’ve done that, I’m sharing it publicly so people can hear the other side.

I’ve already been labeled as an angle shooter, even though no one outside of the Russian-speaking poker community knows my full version of the events. I’d gladly give an interview, but my level of English likely wouldn’t allow me to express my position properly.

Let me start from the end of Day 4 of the Main Event. We were at the same table with Boris Angelov and Stoyan Obreshkov. Blinds were 15k/30k. I opened the button to 60k with K8s. Stoyan 3-bet from the small blind to 185k. We had around 50bb stacks. His sizing looked small to me, and I was deciding between a 4-bet and a call, eventually leaning toward the call. I put my chips out, and — shit — the dealer tells me to add another 100k. “How the hell did I mess this up?” flashes through my mind. A rookie mistake.

Flop comes K64 with no flush draw. I may be wrong, but I think Stoyan bet something like 100k — I call. Pot is about 730k.
Turn is another king. I look at the board — as I often do during hands — and Stoyan says “four seventy-five.” With my hand, it feels like there’s no real option but to call. Sure, there’s a case for raising, but the sizing is large and SPR is low. I figure we’ll get it in on the river anyway. I remove a chip from a tower of 20 x 25k chips and push it forward. Then the dealer says it’s an invalid raise. “Damn,” I think — “you’ve messed up again in the same hand.”

Turns out, Stoyan had said and bet 275k, not 475k.
Please note: two seventy-five and four seventy-five can sound very similar for a non-native speaker, especially after playing 8–12 hours a day for 5 days straight.
They call the floor, explain the raise is invalid, and my action is ruled a call.

River is a low paired card — a 4 or 6. Stoyan checks, I jam around SPR 1. He folds, saying that if my turn action was a trick, he should quit poker. He also said that if I was calling 475k, it’s clear he had a strong range.
Later on Day 5, we discussed the hand — he told me his actual holding and agreed the hand would’ve ended the same way anyway.

I don’t think Boris was fully paying attention to this hand, but it’s likely he saw the sizing confusion or at least noticed something odd.
To me, it’s obvious this situation is completely different from the AKs hand on the final table.

Fast forward to Day 5. Boris and Mariusz were constantly communicating with their rail during the day, getting delayed stream information — around 30 minutes behind — without leaving the table. Phones and smartwatches were technically banned.
I didn’t like the situation — it hurt my EV and the EV of everyone else who didn’t have people feeding them stream data — but it wasn’t against the rules, so I didn’t complain.

Day 6. At the start of the day, I started thinking about ways to hide my cards from the stream to prevent that kind of information from being relayed. I decided not to show one card.
The dealer asked me several times to place the cards properly, and I said I didn’t want to — it wasn’t against the rules.
Around that time, Jamil started objecting, saying I was hiding information and gaining an edge. I told him I would explain my reasoning later — I genuinely didn’t understand why he, who had no one feeding him stream info, was the one objecting.

Then Kokhestani joined in, saying if I don’t show, he won’t either. At that point, the floor came over and made what I believe was a perfect decision — devices were banned from the rail. From that moment, players could only get stream info during breaks — once every two hours. Perfectly fair.

I was fully satisfied and immediately began placing the cards correctly.
Still, I was nervous — I had to explain my position to the tournament director (in bad English), had just clashed with the whole table, and kept replaying the situation in my head.

That happened around minute 41 of the stream.
At minute 43, I check-folded pocket kings (a mistake), with more emotion on my face than when I later won the final hand — a sign that I was clearly not in the best mental state.
At minute 45, I folded 53s and started talking to the waitress — she brought me tea, but I had no cash (our phones were taken). She spoke even worse English than I did. Kokhestani, seeing I was stuck, paid for my tea — that’s on video.

I sat there drinking tea, thinking about where to find €10 to pay him back, whether I misplayed the KK hand, whether the rail situation was fair, how I’d already been playing for 7 straight days, and oh yeah — I’m at the final table of the EPT Main Event and the money is massive.

Next hand — the AKs hand.
Jamil was sitting on the far end of the table. Bright lights were in my face (should’ve brought sunglasses). I finally had my tea. Enrico folded. Mariusz folded. Boris folded. I looked at my cards — AKs — decided to open. I looked at the timer (I usually avoid snap-decisions to not give away timing tells). I grabbed chips and put them out. I announced the raise.
About the verbal announcement — I haven’t reviewed the entire video, but I believe I did this in other hands as well. If this was the first time, I don’t know why I did it — maybe it’s a pattern, maybe a tell. Maybe it’s worth analyzing the previous day for comparison.

Then the dealer told me the sizing was wrong and pointed to Jamil’s raise.
It was only at that moment that I realized Jamil had already raised. I hadn’t seen it or processed it — I was focused on my action, my tea, the timer, and avoiding mistakes.
I didn’t understand what the ruling would be — raise or call — but I immediately realized how bad this would look if ruled a raise.

I had no idea what to do.
And frankly, none of the possible options made any sense:

Folding would look absurd and be +EV suicide

Asking for a re-deal would be ridiculous and not allowed

Asking Jamil to fold to a 3-bet? Nonsense
So I sat there, drank tea, and waited for the situation to resolve.

Jamil made a correct shove but ran into the top of my range. Before revealing my hand, I said “this wasn’t angle shooting” and apologized.

Boris made a comment — half-joking or not — that “this is starting to look like a pattern,” referring to Day 4.
Jamil busted while hearing that. I stood up and tried to apologize and shake hands — he refused. I understand. From his side, with the info he had, it looked dirty.

One more thing about the angle shooting accusation in the AKs spot —
If I were trying to angle shoot, the simpler and more effective way would’ve been to just say “raise” and put the chips out.
Given everything that had happened leading up to that moment, and the stress I was under, it wasn’t even obvious to me within 10 seconds whether 360k would be ruled a raise or a call.

From my side — it was a stupid, unlucky sequence of events and inattentiveness brought on by cumulative EPT stress and the stress of that morning. And now I’ve been labeled an angle shooter.

I’m nearly unknown in the English-speaking poker world.
But in the Russian-speaking community, I’ve had countless friends and colleagues — in both cash games and MTTs.
My reputation has always been clean — no debts, no broken deals, no history of angle shooting.

Jamil let me know that he won’t be commenting on this, and I fully respect that.
For my part, I’m also not planning to continue engaging in this discussion — unless someone directly involved (like Stoyan) publicly disputes key facts.
Otherwise, this is the full story as I experienced it.

That’s how it really happened — no angles, no tricks, just an unfortunate sequence in a high-pressure spot.
Thanks for taking the time to read it.
Aleksandr Shevliakov

@PokerStarsBlog @PokerStarsLIVE @PokerNews @PokerNews_Live @J_Hartigan @Stapes @GriffinBenger