Poker Stories Podcast: Jonathan Little

Poker Stories is a new, long-form audio series that features casual interviews with some of the game’s best players and personalities. Each episode highlights a well-known member of the poker world and dives deep into their favorite tales both on and off the felt.

Click here to download or subscribe to the Poker Stories podcast on iTunes.

Age: 32
Turned Pro: 2006
Lives: Pensacola, Florida
Live Tournament Earnings: $6.5 Million
Best Score: 1st Place – 2008 WPT World Poker Finals Main Event ($1,120,310)

The Highlights

On his early days with online poker…

“I started playing more poker. I was making about $10 an hour [fueling planes at the airport] and I purposely tried to work the graveyard shift, because that is when the fewest planes came in, and that would allow me to play online poker. I would download PartyPoker every night on the company computer, and then I would delete it every morning. It was probably not ethical, but that’s what I did.”

On why he quit college for a career in poker…

“I was just making too much money playing poker. I remember one day I was sitting there playing $10-$20 no-limit in some Psychology lab class where they gave you a computer… which was definitely a mistake. I won something like $20,000 in the two-hour class, which was just absurd. Then it was time to get up and go to the next class, but I just sat there and kept playing, because… well, if they’re giving it away, I’m not getting up and going to class.”

On making a WSOP final table with his parents…

“They had a tag team tournament, and I wasn’t even planning on playing it because I try not to play too many small buy-in tournaments. This was a $1,000 tournament, divided by two or three… so it was not worth my time. But my dad was here and he said, ‘I want to play this tag team tournament and I’m going to play it with your mom.’ So I told him to put me on the team for fun. I played one orbit to start, and then my dad and mom played and they were just the chip leaders for the first day. I don’t know how. I ended up playing the final table… we ended up taking ninth place.”

On wearing sunglasses at the table…

“The main times I wear sunglasses now, is when the game is very serious, and there is no way to make it casual. If you show up to a table and everyone is having a good time, you don’t want to do anything to [mess up] that good time, so that means don’t wear sunglasses, and don’t wear headphones, and don’t be a jerk, be friendly to people. But sometimes you show up at a super high-stakes game where everyone is super serious, and if everyone’s going to be super serious, you have to be serious yourself. If I had to guess, I might wear sunglasses once or twice during the whole [WSOP].”

Click here to download or subscribe to the Poker Stories podcast on iTunes. Catch up on previous episodes and subscribe to have new episodes automatically appear in your podcast app so you can listen on the go.