The Ten Most Wicked Stories of 2007 - Part IV

Winding down the top stories, entries four and three deal with poker playing immigrants who had difficult years in 2007, although for completely different reasons.

4) Shawn Sheikhan Arrested For Some Reason, Threatened With Deportation, Then Not Deported. In late August, the Feds showed up at Shawn Sheikhan's Las Vegas residence and arrested him for a sexual assault charge he already served time for over 10 years ago. He spent a week in jail and faced deportation to Iran due to a new Homeland Security law that looks to oust convicted foreign national sex criminals. However, deportation hearings were halted in November, and Sheiky now appears set to stay in U.S. America for a long time. Good news for golfers everywhere. Read more about Sheikhan here.

3) Vinnie Vinh's Chair Makes History. Six months later, we still don't know what to make of Vinnie Vinh disappearing not once, not twice, but thrice at the 2007 WSOP. Just hands down the funniest story of the year involving poker playing immigrant drug addicts. Even more remarkable, after "account selling" his um, seat to his Chair, said Chair managed to cash twice. As we noted at the time, "This is Vinh's chair's second cash in the 2007 WSOP (it finished 20th in Event 8), establishing a new WSOP record for a chair in a non-chair-only event." Fortunately, Vinh did survive the WSOP, and managed a non-chair cash at the Bellagio Five-Diamond at the end of the year. Read more on Vinh here, see an impromptu interview with Vinh here (we were filming Phil Hellmuth's entry to the Main Event with the 11 models and spotted Vinh smoking outside, so we ran out to talk to him...typically don't wear caps backwards...), and watch an interview with Vinh's chair below.