Earlier this week, Mike Leah pulled off something that just might be some sort of World Series of Poker record when he cashed in three events in the same day. It’s impossible to verify since the WSOP doesn’t keep those sort of records, but Leah was able to do it because of the way the schedule worked and his almost insatiable hunger for success.

Leah smiles when he’s asked about cashing in the $5,000 Six Max No Limit Hold’em (17th place – $24,799), $1,000 No Limit Hold’em (105th – $2,182) and the $1,000 Super Turbo Bounty (272nd – $998) in one day, but that also means he did something else, too.

“Busting them all within fifteen minutes? Not as cool,” said Leah, who knows that his approach to playing the kind of volume he does at the WSOP isn’t something everybody is going to understand.

“Regging the $1K Super Turbo and going to play for 15 minutes to try and triple up my stack or bust so that I can go back to the other ones, I know that I’m hurting my EV in that one, but it really doesn’t matter much,” said Leah. “If something goes wrong in the others ones, like it ended up happening, then I have that one as a back up plan to actually try and make a run in it. But I built up my stack enough in 15 minutes to just leave it in and make the money.”

That’s right. Leah showed up the $1,000 buy-in Super Turbo Bounty, played for just about 15 minutes and then went to his stack in the $5,000 Six Max when that restarted with just 18 players left. After he busted that in 17th, he moved across the room to his Day 2 stack in the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em and went to work building that up. He only returned to his bounty stack while on breaks.

He’s managed to cash nine times already this year, and a total of 28 times since 2015. Leah says its not about chasing the single-year cashes record (13), but more about maximizing his opportunities to make money and not wanting to miss out on a tournament that has value.

“Not necessarily just trying to cash, but I don’t want to miss an event if it makes sense to not miss it, because it’s an event that I have a chance to win,” said Leah. “So whether it’s for Player of the Year, cashes, winning bracelets, it’s everything plus peace of mind knowing that i didn’t skip an event knowing that that was the one I was going to win.”

Given that he’s taken this approach for the last several years, you’d think it was a system that involves extensive planning done weeks before the WSOP actually begins. That’s not the case though. Leah, who has yet to win a bracelet in Las Vegas after winning his first at WSOP-APAC in Australia three years ago, rides the old athlete’s cliche of taking one day at a time. But he does it with purpose.

“I don’t look (at the schedule) more than a day or two in advance. So I started looking at (Friday’s) schedule (Thursday) just starting to think ahead just based on what Day 2s I might make and how I might do it. I also want to look at if there’s a big buy-in I might want to sell for,” said Leah.

He does stay at the Rio to maximize the amount of sleep he can get each day. And halfway through the Series, Leah feels pretty well rested, but still not immune to having a bad day at the tables.

“I’m feeling decent. I got a good nights sleep (Thursday) night. Skipped the first two hours of (Friday’s) $5K because I was feeling a little burned out after a frustrating day (Thursday), getting close in the shootout and then getting a lot of chips in the $3K HORSE and busting. Trying to just start fresh today,” said Leah.

Hitting the refresh button each and every morning is easy says Leah. The way the WSOP schedule works and the variety of games played

That’s the beauty of the WSOP. There’s always an event to be excited about the next day. I love playing all the games so no matter what, like today is a turbo it’s a change of pace and PLO8 is a lot of fun. So there’s always variety that makes it exciting.