When you mix millions of dollars with poker players who seek the limelight, you are bound to have a poker scandal at some point. So it’s poker scandal time.
On Sunday, high stakes cash game live stream personality Nik Airball tweeted that he found out that someone he considered a “close friend” had cheating him out of $1 million in a “series of poker games.” It sounded like he was going to wait to provide further details, but shortly thereafter followed up with, “Whatever, I have no patience or tolerance,” naming Ye Shen, who goes by “Mars,” as the suspect.
Nik said he would provide more detail later, but summarized the situation by saying that Mars, who hosts high stakes games in California, “brought a mechanic dealer and special cards that are ‘see through’ with special contacts.”
Wesley Fei, who also makes frequent appearances on Hustler Casino Live with Nik Airball (HCL has nothing to do with this situation, by the way), spoke with our friends at PokerNews to provide his knowledge of the situation. He said Mars and his crew won about $3 million in about year in the $25/$50 and $50/$100 games, largely by “cheating.”
Wesley told PokerNews that Mars offered to bring his own deck to the series of games in question and said that other should bring a dealer to the game. Mars brought five players to the game, which was combined with another popular game in Southern California. Mars won around $1.6 million, while his group is up about twice that combined.
“We asked Mars, ‘why did you ask to bring the deck?’” Wes explained to PokerNews. “After a game we found a cheating deck. The deck is a very good cheating deck that you can’t find. But we went to a very dark room and we used a blue light and then you can see the numbers on the back of the deck.”
Wesley said Mars denied cheating, but actually admitted to introducing the marked deck. In a text message, Mars told Wesley that he could bring some decks and a separate conversation “admitted the deck has a problem.”
So the poker world is still waiting to hear more from Nik Airball and Mars, but at this point, unless Wesley and Nik are tag team liars, it is not looking good for Mars.
Image credit: Flickr.com / Upupa4me
