Mike McEvoy

The Canterberry Poker League played its last tournament on April 17th, 2020 — twenty-five players, equal to the biggest field that league ever assembled, $288 for first. Mike McEvoy won it. Twelve years of Canterberry poker, and he had the final word.

Three and a half years later he won the one that matters most. December 2023, the Tournament of Champions: nine players, every one of them qualified by something they had already won that season. Mike took four of them out and collected $485 in prize money, the biggest payday of his career.

It did not come easily. His first win did not arrive until his forty-second tournament — Canterberry #93 in August 2017, nineteen players, five knockouts. Thirty-five tournaments in that league passed before he broke through, the longest wait to a first win anybody served in Canterberry.

Since then it has flowed. Two wins in 2023, at #23 in March and #29 in September, the second of those with six knockouts from a twelve-player field. Then #47 in July 2025 for $420, a five-and-a-half-hour night.

The career reads 97 events, 6 wins, 95 knockouts and $2,873 in career prize money. Eleven trips to heads-up and he has won six — a winning record in the last hand, which not many can say. He was also runner-up in the 2023 Player of the Year race, the same year he took the ToC.

Seventeen years in the game, and Mike keeps turning up on the last page.