The 2025 EPT Monte Carlo champion, Aleksandr Shevliakov, has issued a lengthy statement denying angle shooting at the final table of the tournament on Saturday.
Shevliakov won €1 million in the PokerStars event, but the victory was marred by a major controversy that he addressed in a post on X.
Full details of the hand were covered in a previous article, but sixth-place finisher Jamil Wakil accused Shevliakov of 'fake misclicking' to induce a shove. You can watch the hand play out below. Wakil was eliminated and refused to shake Shevliakov's hand afterwards.
Subsequently, Wakil posted a statement on X that explained why he thought it was an angle shoot.
Shevliakov makes lengthy statement
Now, Shevliakov has put his side of the story forward and started the post by saying that he had held off making his statement until he'd reached out to Wakil privately.
The statement is too long to recreate in full in this article, but it goes into detail about what happened in the hand. Shevliakov claims it was an innocent mistake brought about by being distracted by a previous hand he played badly and being flustered after realizing he didn’t have money for a drink — another player ended up spotting him.
Shevliakov says he was "nervous" and had already clashed with the table after not showing both his hole cards because of information that was being given out on the rail. Following this earlier incident, electronic devices were banned on the tournament rail.
Shevliakov: No angles, no tricks
The key part of Shevliakov's post reads as follows:
"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."
Shevliakov continued saying, "That’s how it really happened — no angles, no tricks, just an unfortunate sequence in a high-pressure spot."
Many players have responded to Shevliakov's post and he seems to have won a lot of them over. In his post he said, "Jamil [Wakil] 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."
What do you make of the situation after the two statements from the players involved? Let us know in the comments below.
