Mikhail Semin’s biography

In the poker community, Mikhail "Mikleler" Semin is known as a commentator, presenter, journalist and player. 

Mikhail started to play poker while already being a successful journalist. In his resume, there are such positions as: editor-in-chief of the sports portal "Championship.ru", job at the radio station Mayak, TV channels "Eurosport", "Sport", "Capital", "Russia-2", etc. At first, poker was just a hobby for Semin. In the Russian-speaking poker community, "Mikleler" became popular after running a blog "From editor-in-chief to a poker pro", a title of which turned out to be prophetic for the player.

Over time, the hobby turned into something much deeper, and Mikhail started to combine the jobs of presenter and commentator with a career as a "semi-professional" poker player. For about 5 years, Semin worked as a commentator for PokerStars together with Ilya Gorodetskiy. They are called "the voice of Russian poker" in the Russian-speaking community.

In 2016, Mikhail Semin became a member of PokerDom Team; it was announced on the 6th of February during a team stream of the poker room. Because of that, the poker player had to leave the team of commentators of PokerStars in Russia.

In November 2017, Mikhail announced about leaving the PokerDom Team, and a couple of days later, it was reported that he had become a new media ambassador of Partypoker LIVE. In September 2019, he joined the ambassadors' team of another room, GGPoker.

Semin demonstrates good results in both online and live tournaments. He has repeatedly won prizes in the famous poker series and shown excellent performances. At the WSOP 2016, he became the best player of the series from Russia, and in 2017 and 2018, the guy defended this title.

Interesting facts about Mikhail Semin:

• Mikhail Semin graduated from Moscow State University in the department of journalism.
• In 2013, Mikhail Semin, along with several well-known Russian-speaking regulars, took part in the "Russian House in Vegas" project at the WSOP 2013 from 888poker. It was Mikhail’s idea to create such a project. He made a presentation and sent it to all poker rooms. As a result, 888poker became interested in that idea and gave money for its realization.
• The screen name "Mikleler" consists of two parts: "Mikle" has appeared as a result of the wrong translation of Mikhail’s name into the English language, and "ler" represents the first letters of his wife’s name, Lera.  
• On the 6th of February, 2016, Mikhail Semin became a father of a daughter. The couple named their girl Victoria (Toya).

• Mikhail Semin is relatively recently in poker, and he calls himself a "semi-professional," but you can find a page of "Mikhail Semin" on Wikipedia, where he is listed as a professional poker player.
• In one of NTV's stories in 2018, Semin was announced as "Mikhail - the best Russian player in the world and a commentator in poker. He's like Messi in football, Ovechkin in hockey or LeBron in basketball."
• Some English-speaking resources wrongly call Semin "Mikhail Semenov".           

Mikhail Semin on the social networks:

• Mikhail Semin’s page on Vkontakte (+ his group on Vk)
• Mikhail Semin on Twitter (@MikhailSemin)
• Mikhail Semin’s Facebook page
• Semin on Instagram (semin_mike)