When I Was A Donk: Mike Leah

In this series, Card Player asks top pros to rewind back to their humble beginnings and provide insights regarding the mistakes, leaks, and deficiencies that they had to overcome in order to improve their games.

Mike “goleafsgoeh” Leah is a regular on the live tournament circuit, but when he’s not on the road, he’s grinding away online where he’s earned over $2 million.

Recently, the Canadian pro earned the biggest score of his career, banking $560,000 for his third-place finish in the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker main event.

Card Player caught up with Leah to talk about when his aggression got the best of him early in his career.

“I started my career off differently from most high-stakes tournament pros because I final tabled the Sunday Million on PokerStars the first time I had ever won a satellite entry. From there, I kind of just jumped head first into the bigger buy-in tournaments online. Up until that point, I was pretty much a recreational player, so unlike the other tournament regulars, I didn’t have that time to build up my bankroll while ironing the wrinkles out of my game. Needless to say, my play was full of mistakes at the beginning.
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_“Not long after I started, I was deep again in the Sunday Million as the chip leader with 12 players left. My normal game plan during in that situation is to pick on the short stacks, but more importantly, I like to also pick on the medium stacks, who are usually the ones who are waiting around for people to bust. At that point in the tournament, I’m really trying to earn risk-free chips and increase my stack with dead money.

“In this particular situation, I took the concept of being aggressive on the final table bubble a bit too far and started not only raising every hand, which is sometimes fine, but I also tried too hard to win every hand. I think I leveled myself when others played back at me. I somehow convinced myself that I could play table bully to the extreme and get them to lay down stronger hands just out of the fear of busting.

“Of course, the problem with that logic is that most scared players wouldn’t have played back at me in the first place if they weren’t willing to go all the way with their hand. I didn’t account for that and after doubling a few players up, I found myself out in 12th place. Losing a shot at a big score like that sticks with you, so now I make sure that when I play back at someone on any bubble, I have a really good idea of what their range is and how I will respond to their actions.” ♠