Rivals Week on Poker After Dark

This week on Poker After Dark, airing on NBC, is Rivals Week with a $20,000 buy-in No Limit Texas Holdem winner take all tournament.

The poker rivals that will be doing battle include Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, Shawn Sheikhan, Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak.

Poker After Dark is shown on NBC every morning at 1:05 a.m. Pacific time from Tuesday to Saturday.  There is also a special “Director’s Cut” episode that recaps the action from the week and airs Sunday morning at 1 a.m. pacific time. One of the players in this tournament is facing serious trouble.

The US Government has a program called Operation Predator that deports foreign born nationals that have a criminal sex offender record.  Poker pro Shawn Sheikhan fits into that category. He served nine months and had five years of probation when he was convicted of a misdemeanor sexual battery offense against a 17 year old girl many years ago.

Shahram Sheikhan was convicted in Contra Costa County, California in 1995 on charges of sexual battery and annoyance or molestation of a child. Sheikhan is now 38 years old and a father and a husband.  He is married to an American born woman but he faces deportation back to his native country of Iran, which he left at the age of 9.  Sheikhan made his name in the 2005 World Series of Poker when he bantered back and forth with Mike Matusow.

Sheikhan was arrested at his Las Vegas home August 30th where he lives with his United States wife and 9-year-old daughter. Sherikhan was held in the North Las Vegas Detention Center for more than a week before posting a $10,000 bond.  Las Vegas attorney and professional poker player, David Chesnoff, is representing Sheikhan. Chesnoff represented Bruce Crispin Leyser in Leyser's dispute with Jamie Gold over the $12 million first place prize that Gold received in the 2006 WSOP Main Event.

"This individual was targeted for ICE arrest because of his criminal history," Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the Las Vegas Review Journal. "ICE has an ongoing initiative called Operation Predator targeting individuals, including foreign nationals, who prey upon and sexually exploit children."