From a corporate title as a national sales manager with a cushy salary, Mike Leah sacrificed a lot when he made the decision to instead become a professional poker player in 2008. Introduced to poker by a co-worker in 2005, Mike Leah was fascinated by it from the start. Having made a shocking $40,000 within the first 6 days of playing online was enough to get him hooked.
Mike Leah, aka ‘GoLeafsGoEh’, is a 37 year old Canadian, who needless to say is a die-hard super-fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Unsurprisingly, he resided in Toronto until his teens, by which time his mother’s job as a university professor and her postings took the family to Alberta where he finished high school. The competitive drive was flowing through Mike’s veins from a young age. Having developed a passion for wrestling in high school, he went on to become an accomplished wrestler and managed to get first place in a national championship.
Mike Leah started playing in well-known tournaments in 2006, and much the same as his online poker venture, Mike came to a great start, cashing a whopping $86k by taking down first place in the 2006 Bellagio Cup II tournament, having outlasted 239 opponents. Since then Mike has gone on to prove that this was not just beginners luck, and has since stacked up 159 career cashes, 85 of those through casinos and 67 online. Mike Leah clearly has a knack for both online and live poker, since his total combined winnings of 3 million dollars are quite evenly split between online and live poker. Out of all of these cashes, Mike earned himself an impressive 8 first place finishes. All in all, 2008 turned out to be Mike’s best year for poker though, with $600k in overall winnings as well as no less than 5 WSOP cashes. Then in 2011, he made his biggest cash ever, a third place finish for $560k in an online tournament.
Later on in 2012, Mike got himself another 4 WSOP cashes. Mike’s most notable wins in 2012 included $25k from an 8th place in an online tournament and another $25k for the NLH Six Max Re-entry Event in the 2012 Borgata Spring Poker Open. Mike was named the Horseshoe Hammond Casino Champion at their 2012 WSOP Circuit Event Series
When asked what his favorite poker game is, Mike joyfully responded, “limit holdem, razz, any game u can only min raise is the shizzle”. Mike is also partial to turbo’s and short-handed play, and has a well known love for the min-raise. He is not reserved about his reasoning for this and other strategies he implements, which is made evident by all the online poker strategy tutorials that he records. Mike Leah is not only a winner himself, but the large number of tutorials he has made shows that he wants to make a winner out of all his fans too.
Browsing through Mike Leah’s website is an enlightening experience in which you can listen to his favorite grinding playlist while reading his blog, finding out about his private coaching and also browsing through a range of related articles which have been written about him.
