No matter how far he's travelled, or how much money he's made at the various poker tables, Brad Booth never forgets where he came from.

Booth, nicknamed 'Yukon Brad', or just 'Yukon', has become one of the world's top professional poker players over the past few years.

He's collected major cash prizes in events like the Work Poker Tour's Mandalay Bay Championship last June $320,000 and has been featured on TV specials Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker.

Booth lived at the Bellagio in Las Vegas for 14 straight months, and was back in the territory this past weekend to visit friends and enjoy the Yukon wilderness.

While he was born and raised in Vancouver, Booth spent about eight years in Haines Junction and Whitehorse, honing his skills in home games while making occasional trips to play in Calgary, and eventually Vegas.

He made the permanent move to Las Vegas about two years ago.

'This is where I found myself 10 years ago,' Booth, in an interview last week, says of the Yukon. 'This is where my heart is. Yukon is my home.

'Yukon Brad. That's my name.'

Booth got his start in the poker world at the tender age of 15 and a half. His mom and dad thought he was still going to school everyday, when in fact he was working as a pizza delivery man at a Vancouver area Little Caesar's, earning enough money to support his card habits.

His parents had promised him a car for his 16th birthday, so he had to keep the bluff up until the end of the school year. But upon receiving his car, Booth let his parents know he was off to play junior hockey, as well as poker.

At the age of 19, he moved to Haines Junction, but was commuting into Whitehorse regularly to hit the home games. He moved to Vernon, B.C. temporarily about three years later, but like a lot of people, found himself drawn back to the North this time, moving into Whitehorse.

Over the following four or five years, Booth continued playing poker throughout the territory.

'Haines Junction, Burwash Landing, Dawson City ... those are the people who helped make me who I am today,' he says. 'I have a lot of history playing cards in those places. That's where my heart is for sure.'

Eventually, Booth started his own home game in the Yukon capital. It was there that he began mentoring fellow Yukoner James Lopushinsky, who took the top prize of $250,000 at the 2006 Canadian Open Poker Championship in Calgary.

Booth also honed fellow Yukoner Derrick Law's poker skills, and Law went on to finish second at a $2 million No Limit Texas Hold'Em event in Vancouver last fall, earning a cool $290,000 for his efforts.

'I've got a really kick ass record for people I've actually taught,' laughs Booth, adding a good friend of his, an owner of Cirque de Soleil, recently finished fourth in a World Series of Poker event for nearly $700,000.

'I guess I'm doing something right.'

That could be called a huge understatement. Since deciding to enter the tournament circuit in 2005, Booth estimates he's collected $800,000 to $1 million in winnings. He was ranked 67th in Bluff Magazine's 2006 Play of the Year standings.

In his first major tournament, the $5,000 Short-Handed No-Limit Hold em event at the 2005 World Series of Poker (WSOP), Booth placed 12th, cashing in for nearly $17,000. This was quickly followed by a second-place finish that same year in the Bellagio Festa Al Lago $2,500 No-Limit Hold' em tournament, where he netted nearly $88,000.

The hot streak continued in 2006, with a string of five-figure cashes in World Poker Tour events. His biggest success to date was the Mandalay Bay event last June.

Since then, Booth has had several more impressive finishes in large tournaments, most notably a fifth-place finish in the 2007 National Heads-Up Championship broadcast on NBC.

He just finished filming the third season of High Stakes Poker, as well Poker After Dark.

After spending the weekend in the Yukon, trying to get in some fishing and boating during a break from his busy schedule, Booth is on his way back to Vegas. He'll be playing in the World Series of Poker for the next few months.

'Then it's off to Croatia to do some sailing,' he explains. 'Last year, I sailed the Mediterranean (Sea), now the Adriatic. Then in January, I'm doing the Caribbean.'

Through all of his success, Booth remains grounded. When asked why he continues to play poker, you would expect the obvious answer money. And while that's certainly part of it, Booth insists there's more to it.

'A lot of it is the competitive side, but also the friends and people I've met over the years. There's a lot of honour in the poker world. It's not always about the money. Sometimes it's about the company.

'Whether I have $20 million or $20,000, I'll always remain Brad Booth.'