Well-known poker player Shahram “Shawn” Sheikhan has been sentenced to four years in a federal prison after being sentenced on a single felony count of operating an illegal cannabis-distribution facility called Cannaland. Sheikhan and another defendant who faced a similar charge, Sabriana Williams, pled guilty in the case in June of 2022, following a 2021 …
Continue reading “Four years for Shawn Sheikhan in Cannaland dispensary case”
Later this week, a day of reckoning will arrive for Shahram “Shawn” Sheikhan, one of numerous poker players who gained a measure of fame during the heyday of televised poker during the 2000s. Sheikhan has had a small number of skirmishes with the law, and he’s been back in court a bit over the past …
Continue reading “‘Sheiky’ awaits sentencing in illicit pot-dispensary case”
Stepping back into online poker’s past this time out, illustrating that some things just aren’t as new as they might appear. Back in 2010, when PokerStars was still available in the United States, they briefly offered a form of a sit-‘n-go called Double or Nothing, or DON SNGs. The format seemed simple enough. In a …
Continue reading “GGPoker exploited by Chinese late-registration rings”
Here’s a tale from the “two wrongs don’t make a right” category, which is too often the case in online poker. This story centers on a site that’s currently the world’s largest but isn’t even available to American players, GGPoker. That “available” stuff is said with a nod and a wink, of course, as the …
Continue reading “GGPoker bounces Sharkscope as transparency concerns dog site”
The World Series of Poker has always served up its Main Event as its prime course, but in 2023, that went to new heights, literally. More formally known as the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Championship, the event received even more promotional love from the WSOP and its parent company, Caesars Entertainment, than any other WSOP …
Continue reading “The WSOP Chronicles, Part 2: The Main Event, above all else”
Every year, the World Series of Poker becomes a little bit more sanitized, a little bit more commercial, a little bit more corporate. Just back from a month at the Horseshoe and Paris commercials, your loyal pokerr scribe returns here with the first in a series of close-ups from the 2023 WSOP. It’s of course …
Continue reading “The WSOP Chronicles, Part 1: A series under glass”
It’s been a few weels since the passing of the Godfather of Poker, Doyle Brunson, who was in all likelihood the greatest legend poker has produced. Doyle’s passing at age 89 was a stunner to the poker world, though he had survived numerous serious health issues in earlier years and his death wasn’t sudden or …
It’s back to Texas we go, this time, for a look at a curious situation that remains unresolved. What happens when a bad-beat jackpot becomes a dispute and is quickly denied on a technicality? Earlier this month, at the San Antonio Poker Palace, a hand went down that should’ve resulted in a hefty bad-beat payout, …
Continue reading “All the best (poker) messes are in Texas, Volume II”
Last month, we tallked about the problem facing many online poker players on Nevada’s only legalized and regulated site, WSOP.com, and how it appears that the prospect of winning a bracelet in a relatively inexpensive online tourney has drawn a lot of cheaters out of the virtual woodwork. This month, the battle over transparency and …
Continue reading “Nevada proposes online poker blacklist, but Caesars says nay”
It just gets weirder and weirder in the Lone Star State, where the battle over poker’s present and future currently rolls on across several battlefronts, none of which have much to do with the online game. Instead, it’s the social-club poker scene, the workaround to existing Texas gambling laws that poker-loving entrepreneurs have embraced, that …
