Ye Shen (aka Tony Mars) denies all allegations of cheating a private Southern California poker game out of $3M. The charges were leveled by fellow poker pros Nikhil “Nik Airball” Arcot and Wesley “Wes Side” Fei on X/Twitter this weekend.
According to the “Hustler Casino Live” stream regulars, Shen brought a trick card deck to a recreational private game in Yorba Linda, Calif. for about a year. Shen’s deck supposedly allowed him to see through the cards, presumably with the help of special contact lenses,
“I’m writing this statement to set the record straight on some false accusations that personally damaged my reputation,” Shen wrote in a statement to Poker News. “I have won and lost huge amounts numerous times in my poker career, but I have never cheated in a game, and I have always paid when I lost.”
Marked Difference of Opinion
“After a game, we found a cheating deck,” Fei told Poker News, stating his belief that Shen and two of his associates had brought it. “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.”
In his statement to PokerNews, Shen wrote: “I didn’t bring any cards anywhere.” To back his claim, he wrote that “since we are playing at Yorba, there was no need for me to bring cards because they have multiple decks there at the game.”
Shen continued: “When I arrived at the game, there was 6-7 people already sitting at the table. So there is no way that I could have switched or brought cards since everyone was there.”
Wild Card
More to the point, Shen claimed that the real cheater came forward to him three weeks after the game.
One of the players who went back to China confessed to me on the phone and said he was sorry for all of the players blaming me,” Shen wrote. “He went on to tell me he switched the cards because he was losing so much recently.”
The cheat’s name is Sun, according to Shen, who said that after he received the confession, “I went directly to the owner of the house and explained everything.” Shen added that “two other people other than me can confirm this.”
Harboring bad blood about being accused, Shen added that believes Fei accused him because he “is broke, desperate, and tries to not pay the money he owes me.”
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