Jonathan Little is a man who needs no introduction. In the poker circles, he’s known for both his coaching acumen and his results at the tables, often battling it out in the toughest of tournament fields out there.
Still, for someone as well-known as he is, the story of Jonathan Little may not be as familiar as those of some other big-name players. 888poker set out to right the wrong, taking him on one of their famous rides with Dave Tuchman in the driver’s seat.
If you’d like to learn more about Little’s poker beginnings, his current affairs, and future plans, keep on reading and check out the video for the full interview. As always, it’s filled with interesting info, fun tidbits, and well-timed jokes to lift up the mood.
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The Hardest Working Person in Poker?
Determining how much work any poker player puts in behind the scenes isn’t always easy. However, when it comes to Little, Tuchman believes he just might be the hardest-working person in poker.
Over the years, Jonathan published 15 poker books, he regularly creates and publishes poker coaching content for his training site, and he’s very active as a player, regularly posting formidable results.
As is customary, the interview begins with a few questions about Little’s poker beginnings. He grew up playing games with his family, in particular chess, a game that he came to be pretty good at in his teens but later gave up on.
Later on, Jonathan discovered Magic: The Gathering, a card game that many successful poker players were involved with at one point or another. One day, after a Magic tournament, he was invited to a poker game, and the rest is, as they say, history.
Although his initial attempts at the game wasn’t very successful, Little realized that poker was a skill game where studying and applying himself could help him become a winner.
Reflecting back on his early chess success and the reasons he gave up, he explains that poker, to some extent, has ruined his patience.
Later on in the interview, he goes into more details about his poker beginnings with sit and goes, some early struggles, and how his willingness to stay focused and drop down in stakes helped him overcome the hardships and come out on top.
Jonathan Little Away from the Felt
Those who follow Little on his social channels know that a majority of his posts are about poker and, to some extent, about his other interests, like NFTs. However, he shares very little about his personal life, and Tuchman wanted to learn more about who Jonathan Little is away from the felt.
Married father of two, Little currently resides in New York, and whenever he’s not traveling to play poker, he enjoys spending time with his family. These days, he spends about three weeks out of four every months at home, splitting his day between business endeavors and quality family time.
He spends a lot of his time working, which is, in great part, what made him successful. As Little emphasizes, he may not be the smartest person in any given situation, but he’ll often be the hardest-working one, with the will and resolve to put in the time and effort to figure things out.
Finding the Balance for Success
Having spent about half of his life playing and teaching poker, Little believes he found a formula that works for him. He is able to still enjoy things by applying himself to whatever is next on his list, be it playing, writing, or producing content, give it his full focus for a while, and then step away from it.
This has helped him prevent the burnout and maintain high levels of passion for things he does, despite some of them being repetitive.
Little transfers this balanced approach to his social media presence as well. His public posts are mostly about the thing he knows and understands the most: poker. He prefers to stay away from divisive topics like politics or even sports as, no matter what side you’re on, it’ll lead to some people not liking you.
I like walking around in public and not having people want to attack me and be mean to me.
Jonathan is refreshingly honest about his approach, explaining that if you want to be successful on the internet, you want people to like you and want to give you their money. And it’s hard to argue with this logic.
On Poker & Business
When it comes to his poker endeavors, Little approaches the game with a cool head and a very sober view. Instead of focusing on singular results, he shows up to play, knowing that, if he plays well, he’ll extract his EV from the event, and that’s all that matters in the long run.
He doesn’t need to get amped up or super-motivated to go to play. Jonathan says that, in all honesty, he probably brings his 90% to the tables, but he does so consistently, and that’s good enough to be successful and profitable.
Talking about the future, he admits that he doesn’t really have long-term goals or bucket list items as such. In general, he wants to make his training site even better and get better at poker himself, but Little admits that setting goals and figuring out what he wants to do, even in the short term, isn’t his strongest suit.
As for his very successful training business, he explains that he prefers to stick to his strong areas, which is primarily producing quality content. He recognizes that there are people in the company that are better in certain areas, and he simply lets them do their thing.
Little’s closing message to all poker enthusiasts out there is that the game has certainly gotten tougher over time, but at the same time, there are still plenty of games that can be beaten. As long as you study enough and put in a decent amount of volume, there is still plenty of money to be made in poker!
