Canada’s Mike ‘goleafsgoeh’ Leah talks about winning two SCOOP titles in 2016 and about repping his home country

The 48th event of the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker ended with a win by Canada’s Mike ‘goleafsgoeh’ Leah. The $2,100 Seven card Stud tournament had a field of 65 entrants and Leah’s victory was memorable not only because he booked a $42,000 payday, but also because it was his second SCOOP victory of 2016 and second all-time.

His first SCOOP title came just a few days earlier in a $27 Limit Hold’em Six Max. His reward was $6,300 and he helped ensure that Canada would be a force to be reckoned with during the annual PokerStars series. All told, Leah had one-seventh of Canada’s 14 SCOOP wins this year.

But the grind has taken its toll.

“I’m still recovering from SCOOP,” he said. “I haven’t held down any food or water for 30 hours. I haven’t had the recovery period I wanted to yet. Sixteen days in a row of playing 15 hours a day is an intense grind. I’m happy it’s over, but as time goes on, I’ll appreciate that I got two SCOOP titles. Looking back on it, I’ll be satisfied with my results.”

Leah wasn’t exaggerating when he said he couldn’t hold down any food or water. You’d think he just ran a marathon, and in a sense he did: 240 hours of poker in just over two weeks.

“I beat down my system so much that once SCOOP was over, my body shut down a bit,” he said.

In addition to his dual SCOOP titles, Leah has a pair of (WCOOP) bracelets. He took down a $215 Pot Limit Omaha Six Max Progressive Super Knockout last September and scored the “W” in a $320 Limit Badugi event in 2011.

“SCOOP is by far more intense than anything else because I normally don’t play a lot of tables, but SCOOP forces me to,” the Canadian said. “Usually when I’m playing online, I’m playing one table and enjoying poker. During SCOOP, I’m pulling up most of the tourneys and they’re all different game types. Saturday and Sunday there are five or six events a day, and this year every event was a two-day event. It was intense.”

For Leah, despite the physical beating his body took, the grind was well worth it, not only because he won two events, but also because SCOOP serves as a tune-up for the World Series of Poker.

“It’s a great warm-up for the WSOP to get re-acclimated to the games I don’t play very often,” he said. “It’d be nice if some of the SCOOP events were faster, though. I have no self-control. I can’t take a day off when there’s an event I want to play.”

Just like the WSOP, SCOOP features a variety of games in a variety of formats. If you’re not a fan of Hold’em, you can play Stud, Omaha, Razz, Badugi, and plenty of other games instead.

“I pretty much play anything anyway, but there are some events I enjoy more,” Leah said. “There are some games I would play the low, medium, and high versions of no matter what like Mixed Games, whereas some of the other games I might skip one or two because I don’t think I have much of an edge like the big buy-in PLOs where I wouldn’t want to fire off money if I didn’t think I had an edge. In the last five days when I was in the hunt for SCOOP Player of the Series, I fired everything.”

Shaun ‘shaundeeb’ Deeb ended up winning the 2016 SCOOP Player of the Series race with 925 points, while Leah ended up in a two-way tie for fifth at 760.

“Poker is always about goals,” Leah said of his Player of the Series battle. “That’s one of the main reasons I’ve had success. I don’t concentrate on the money. Instead, I focus on goals and competition and that helps me play my best and compete. That $27 Limit Hold’em tournament I won was only for $6,000. If I were looking at the prize pool, I wouldn’t have cared that much, but because it’s a SCOOP event and there’s a title and a leaderboard, it helps me try harder.”

Leah is #8 on the all-time poker money list for Canada, according to the Hendon Mob, and represents his home nation in games all over the world.

“I’m a proud Canadian. That’s my home and that’s the country I represent. I notice it a lot more when I’m at tourneys in Canada, like when I’m in Montreal and most people know me and look up to me. I feel like an ambassador,” said Leah. “At the WSOP, I care about it and want to hear the Canadian national anthem played at my bracelet ceremony.”

If he does win his first bracelet on US soil and his second overall, he’ll likely be surrounded by plenty of friends and family.

“I’m confident it’s going to happen this year,” Leah said. “I can’t see myself not winning one. My focus and my results lately have been good. I’m going there expecting to win at least one. I’m going there trying to be Player of the Year. I’m going to have as good of a chance as anyone because of my volume and because I play all of the games.”

Also on Leah’s rail should he win a bracelet will be plenty of fellow Canadian poker pros.

“The Greenwoods [Sam and Max]have been great recently,” Leah said of his top-performing countrymen. “Mike ‘timex’ McDonald is great too. There are deep-skilled Canadian poker players I play with in Montreal who are all solid. My lesser-known buddy who travels with me is due as well: Thomas Taylor. He had a couple of final tables at the WSOP last year. I’m thinking this might be a breakthrough year for him.”