Shevliakov Responds to EPT Controversy: “There Was No Trickery”

After Aleksandr Shevliakov won the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event, attention quickly shifted from his victory to a controversial hand at the final table. According to Jamil Wakil, Shevliakov used angle shooting to gain an unfair edge – prompting the new champion to issue a detailed public statement.

Posting on X (formerly Twitter), Shevliakov explained his side of the story. He said he hadn’t noticed Wakil’s UTG raise and intended to open for 360,000 himself. Once the dealer pointed out that the correct action was a minimum raise to 420,000, he adjusted his bet. Wakil, thinking Shevliakov had overlooked his raise and was playing a wide range, shoved all-in. Shevliakov, holding A♥K♥, snap-called. After the hand, Shevliakov immediately apologized, emphasizing that the situation was a misunderstanding, not an intentional trick.

Commentators were divided. Griffin Benger described the move as a textbook angle shoot, while Joe Stapleton remained unsure. Benger initially pointed out that Shevliakov hadn’t verbally announced his bets before, but a review later showed that Shevliakov had in fact declared his preflop raise verbally seven times on Day 5 — including in the first three final table hands.

Jamil Wakil also issued a statement, claiming Shevliakov exploited a grey area in the rules. He also criticized Shevliakov for repeatedly refusing to place his cards on the RFID reader, despite the feature table rules requiring it. According to Wakil, this may have been an attempt to deny information to opponents who had access to delayed stream data.

While Wakil acknowledged that the decision to shove was ultimately his, and that Shevliakov broke no rules, he still called the move ethically questionable.

After Wakil was eliminated, Boris Angelov, who went on to finish third, told him that Shevliakov had done “the same trick” earlier in the tournament. While Angelov exaggerated by saying it happened "against twenty players," one such incident did take place.

On Day 4, Shevliakov misread the bet size in a hand against Stoyan Obreshkov and made an invalid raise on the turn. Obreshkov later confirmed the key details and said the error didn’t affect the hand’s outcome. While he didn’t consider it an angle shoot at the time, he admitted that the final table hand casts it in a new light.

According to Shevliakov, the controversial hand was simply the result of stress and a lapse in focus, with no intent to mislead or gain an unfair advantage. Wakil, on the other hand, is convinced it was a calculated angle. The poker community remains divided.