Mike Leah has made a habit out of winning at Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls (photo provided)

Mike ‘GoLeafsGoEh’ Leah has a poker resume that is comparable with almost anybody in the world. He’s got a World Series of Poker bracelet, multiple World Championship of Online Poker titles, over $5.5 million in live earnings and just shy of $3 million in online earnings.

Of all his achievements on the felt, Leah feels that he accomplished the most impressive feat on his poker resume on Monday afternoon at the Fallsview Hotel and Casino.

The Canadian pro topped a field of 1,524 entries in the CAD$1,100 No Limit Hold’em event to take down CAD$244,256 ($187,051 US). This is the second year in a row and third time in the last four years he’s won this World Poker Tour prelim event. In 2016, he bested a field of 1,305 for CAD$210,108, and in 2014, he came out on top of a 649-entry field for CAD$118,982.

“I think it ranks number one as my poker career accomplishment,” said Leah of his latest victory. “I’m very proud not only because of what I actually get but the fact that I came into this tournament saying ‘I’m going to win this poker tournament.’ Everything leading up to this tournament, I wanted, expected, and was going to do everything I possibly could to not just do good in the tournament, but to outright win it because I wanted to accomplish the feat of winning it in back-to-back years and three out of four years.”

Some players may chalk up this kind of a run to some run good, but Leah made decisions to put himself in the right frame of mind before playing this event.

After spending time in Montreal for a previous WPT stop at the Playground Poker Club, Leah spent a couple of days at home in Toronto before heading south to Fallsview. To get himself motivated for the upcoming tournament, he went back through his social media posts from a year ago, and looked at previous updates throughout his 2016 run at the title.

“I went through my posts and chip counts and started to kind of visualize that I was going to do it again,” said Leah. “For me, motivation is probably my biggest factor of my success when I do good in a tournament. So, I just wanted to make sure I was motivated as possible so that I could make the run at it again.”

Adding to Leah’s motivation was the location of the venue. The limited number of major tour stops in Canada got the 42-year-old veteran a little more excited playing on his home turf.

“I really enjoy playing poker tournaments in Canada,” said Leah. “Whether it’s Montreal at Playground or here in Fallsview. It feels really good to be playing in your home country since there aren’t as many tournaments. So, I’m a little more motivated to play here.”

The timing of his win couldn’t come at a better time for Leah. With the WPT Fallsview Main Event starting on Wednesday, Leah looks to keep his momentum going and win his first WPT Main Tour title by the week’s end.

Leah believes that all good runs start with two things.

“Momentum and confidence are really big factors in poker,” said Leah. “If you look at the year that Dan Colman had in 2014 and Anthony Zinno in 2015. Look at Fedor (.Holz) winning everything. Confidence is key because every time you do it, it makes it seems that much easier and attainable to do again.

“Sometimes people think poker is hard and it’s hard to see yourself winning. But when you have confidence, you don’t get ahead of yourself. You don’t try and win a tournament in level one.”

Regardless of the outcome in his next event, Leah is already getting excited at the idea of a three-peat in the CAD$1,100 event.

“Even more so than this year,” said Leah about his motivation to win this event again in 2018. “I’m going to try and replicate the preparation, but to an extra degree. It’s just such an unheard-of thing to do to go through such big fields. It’s going to make me want to do it again that much more.”