Jonathan Little: 2x WPT Champ, $7 Million+, 14x Poker Strategy Author

Brad: Hello and welcome my friend. This is the founder of enhanceyouredge.com, Brad Wilson and I am pumped to have you join me for another episode of Chasing Poker Greatness. Today I’m speaking with the 2007 WPT Player of the Year, Jonathan Little. Jonathan’s a two-time WPT tournament champion, with more than 6.8 million in tournament wins. He’s also published 14 of the most high impact poker strategy books on the market today with numbers 15 and 16, hitting shelves in the near future. And not only is Jonathan a tournament crusher extraordinaire, as the founder of pokercoaching.com, he’s also a world class coach who creates all kinds of amazing strategic content across all platforms. He also writes regularly for some of the largest poker websites on the internet, pokernews.com and cardplayer.com. I don’t think we got into this very much, but I am not quite sure when the man finds time to sleep. And although he’s had great success, Jonathan is quick to point out that it wasn’t an easy path to get to where he is now. He’s very clear about the fact that counterintuitively. He doesn’t believe he possesses many of the qualities most people associate with successful professional poker players. But lacking those qualities certainly hasn’t stopped them. Jonathan’s a perfect example of what you can achieve through hard work and dedication to your passion. During our conversation, you’ll hear how he got his start in poker, how he’s managed to keep improving and stay on top over the last 15 years, and what he’s thinking for the future. I’m sure you’ll also love his great insights into the game itself, what it takes to learn and improve, and the benefits of both teaching others and working with coaches. There are a few people in the game who worked so tirelessly and trying to help others learn how to play cards, no matter the level that they’re currently at, or wish to reach in the future. John was a joy to speak to and an absolute goldmine for dispensing poker wisdom. So, without any further ado, I present to you, World Champion poker player, prolific poker author, and world class poker coach, Mr. Jonathan Little.

Brad: Jonathan, welcome to the show, man. It’s great having you here. 

Jonathan: Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Brad: It’s my pleasure. My pleasure. Let’s kick this thing off by telling me about either your most memorable poker experience or one of them. It could be an entire trip, single tournament, final table, just something that sticks out in your mind.

Jonathan: Unfortunately, my brain does not remember things very well. I know that sounds crazy for poker player because people think going nuts have a great memory. Remember all these tales and all this, but, I do not. I’m quite bad at it. I’ve had many great successes or one, two World Poker Tour tournaments. I have almost no mental recollection of either of them. It’s not because I was on drugs or drunk or anything. Just, I’m bad at remembering stuff. And I mean, one of my biggest regrets, I guess is that I do not have these memories to savor, right? Because now if I went to tournament, like 100k, I won a tournament the other day, won that trophy for $100,000. I remember that. That was nice. And like now I realize I need to savor even the little victories, because they really don’t come around all that often. And so yeah, I won 100, I won a tournament the other day, that was lucky. And that was a great memory because I showed up to the tournament, played great on the first entry. Lost the tournament right at the end of the reentry period, I got it all in good with ace king and ace queen for a lot of chips. We bought in for 15 big lines, was immediately placed in the big line with the ante. So, I lost you know two of them right off the bat. I table broke the next hand, they move me to the big line to get on the next hand. So now I’m down to 11 big blinds. And from there, I just proceeded to win every hand. All of my bluffs work. All my traps worked and I won the tournament. So, it’s good to realize that even when things are kind of going poorly, they can turn around at any moment.

Brad: And they can quickly turn around.

Jonathan: Very quickly.

Brad: Win in every hand.

Jonathan: All you have to do is whenever hit. Actually, I was a very solid, you know, bottom, bottom third stack most of the tournament but then at the final table, I just got some hands. It turns out to get some hands at the final table you win.

Brad: That’s how she goes.

Jonathan: Yes.

Brad: Okay. How about this, since your memory is failing you. The good thing is, you know, your big tournament victories, they’re documented, right? So, you can just watch them back to refresh your memory. So, in my research, I do know and you better remember this because you’ll be in trouble if you don’t. You met your wife through poker. Tell me about that.

Jonathan: I met my wife at the Poker Stars Caribbean adventure. I guess about I don’t know how long ago, probably nine years ago. Sounds about right. So, matter about nine years ago, the PCA, it was her last day of a New Year’s Eve trip. And it was my first day of the PCA. And if all the high stakes players knew that you wire your money to poker stars, and you show up a day or two ahead of time to make sure you can collect it, because they would lose it every single year. This is before you can just buy and using the poker stars money. So, I was there with you know 30 other very high stakes poker players making sure that we all collect our money, because it’s not our first rodeo. We know you want to be able to buy in for the tournament. So, you show up day ahead of time, collect your money.

Brad: Kind of important if you want to win.

Jonathan: Yeah, so we were all there trying to collect our money. And they didn’t have it, like usual. So, the option was to either walk three miles back to the hotel room. It’s a very, very long walk back to the hotel room or just hang out for like two hours. So, I was there with a few of my friends. One of them Jonathan Jaffe, who is now coach on my site pokercoaching.com, and I beat him heads up and I won World Poker Tour event in Foxborough. And so I don’t know if he loves me or hates me. He said, why don’t you play single with me and four other world class heads up sit and go players and their girlfriends. So, I was the only single person at the table, which is kind of odd. And then a lady walks up behind me. And I know she’s not with any of the guys in the table because they all have their girlfriends. So, we started chatting a little bit. She says that her dad and her brother play poker a little bit. She wanted to come check out the tournament, and I punted the $100 tournament really quickly and went out to dinner. And then, a few weeks later, one of my poker students that he was having a charity event in New York City, where my current wife is, my now wife is from and we, I came here on spending something like $500 a night on a hotel room, and she said, that’s ridiculous, why don’t you stay with me? And then I just didn’t move out. And that’s how I got my wife.

Brad: Your current wife.

Jonathan: My current wife, yes.

Brad: Current wife. Basically, just a random sequence of events. She shows up behind you, you start having a conversation, you punt. And that’s it. The rest is kind of history.

Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, a lot of things had to go, right. I mean, I had to be friendly with Jonathan Jaffe, who I beat heads up out of $500,000. Right. I mean, so that, that had to, he had to be a nice person, you’d be heads up. My wife was there in the Bahamas with actually two friends. And they, those two were having a spat, and they went their own separate ways. And so that had to happen. And leaving my wife alone by herself in Atlantis. And I had to know to show up a day ahead of time. So, a lot of random stuff had to happen. And now I have an amazing wife and two amazing kids. And that’s lucky.

Brad: That is luckier than being a single tournament for sure.

Jonathan: Yes.

Brad: And so obviously, you’ve had lots of success, playing live playing, playing tournaments, and live poker. I read that you struggled in your first year from transitioning from online to life. Looking back, is there any particular reason why?

Jonathan:  Main reason why is because when I was 18 to 21, I played only sit and goes, almost entirely sent you those 90-98% sit and goes. I was a very good single player, one of the biggest winning players and sit and goes. And live poker tournaments are very different than sit and goes, it’s not just an all in a bowl game, I was really good at going all in or folding with a blinds. And I was not so good at playing 100 big blinds deep. So, I would just, I just didn’t know how play very well. I wasn’t very good, because what it amounts to I was not a good turn, multi-table tournament player, because multi-table tournaments need to get in the top 2% of the field to make any real money. Whereas in sit and goes, you need to get in the top 30% of the field. Its very, very different strategy required. So, I had to learn and I realized after about six months that hey, I’m clearly not doing this right. I not just suppose just sit here and get short and go all in. So, I progressed and learn from surrounding myself with good people and got better.

Brad: I just imagine you, you know, folding down to eight big blinds where you’re in your comfort zone, like yes, this is sit and go territory. I’m going to crush.

Jonathan: You know, a lot of online players today purposely buy in relatively late into tournaments, not because they’re getting even closer to getting in the money, but because they know they’re not very good at 200 big blind poker. And they don’t necessarily want to do that. So, they buy in with like 30 or 40 big blinds, because that’s the stacks that they know perfectly. And it’s not such a bad strategy. Like imagine you know, you’ve never studied Twitter mabeline poker and you know, it’s a tough game. Just don’t play it. You don’t have to play it. You just buy late all the time. What timing if you big blinds and then shoot it in there.

Brad: It’s really interesting to me because I’m a cash game player. So, depth, you’re, there’s always just insane depth, and super goes super deep into the decision tree. And I don’t play a lot of live tournaments. I did play one a few months ago. And what I realized in the live tournament was like, oh, these, these guys are not very good at, like 102-100 big blinds deep, right? I’m like, oh, my God just have such a big edge. I’m crushing these guys. And then when I got down to, you know, 20-25 big blinds, I was like, uh-oh. I haven’t, I haven’t put in much ended up that study into playing short. So, it’s just an interesting, interesting thing. 

Jonathan: Well, very often, if you look at tournament chip counts, you’ll find that the well-known cash game players are very high at the top of the chip leaderboard. At the end of like they won, or the first four or five levels of the tournament. That’s because they’re great at blank deep stack. Right. But then inevitably, stacks get shallower. And even if they’re still deep with 100 or 200 big blinds, the average stack, maybe only 30 big lines, and they’re playing with a bunch of 20 and 30 big line stacks. And they would study those spots a lot. Or maybe they’re still opening a little bit too wide, or calling to why trying to get good implied off don’t exist or whatever. And mean, really, the players just have to understand that they have to understand the exact game they’re playing at that moment. And sometimes in terms of playing deep sometimes or playing shallow. And I think you’ll find a lot of the very best tournament players are not really the best at any specific stack depth or form of poker. They’re just pretty great at everything. And you know, if you’re 90 out of 100 every skill, whereas a cash game player might be 100 out of 100, and deep stack play, but like 20 out of 100 and shallow sack play, there’s not going to make it. And same thing goes for you know, the players who are really bad deep stack, because there is a whole lot of edge to be gained in the deep stack portion of the tournament. You just have to recognize how to adjust and because it is a different game.

Brad: For sure. 100%. Got to be adaptable. And yeah, did all the different, different phases of poker tournaments. Fortunately for me in a cash game, I can just raise my hand and call for chips.

Jonathan: That’s right,

Brad: I get down to 20 big blinds. What do you think is your most important attribute that you correlate to your success?

Jonathan: Oh, there are a few. I can go to bed and wake up and pretty much forget what happened the day before in terms of rough things. You know, a lot of people they get sad and depressed for long periods of time whenever they’re in a downswing. I just don’t care. I wake up and I do it again. That’s one.

Brad: Why don’t you care? Did you ever care? Or is it something that has happened over time?

Jonathan: When I was a younger kid, I would play chess. And I would lose sometimes, right? I was one of the better people in my school, but I would play against the people who are better than me, and they would beat me and that’s good. It’s good to get beaten and something you’re trying very hard at. I would play Magic The Gathering, same thing I would that I would beat most people. But some people would still beat me and you get beat especially you know, the better people tend to make it deeper in tournaments. And then you get beaten in the higher stakes games. Even though you’re not really playing for much money, you still get beaten when it matters. And that teaches you like this happens. It’s okay. Whenever I was in high school, I played the trumpet. I was one of the best trumpet players in the county and my teacher, I think purposely gave me solos to play there were way too difficult. So, I will be playing in front of everyone and mess it up 80% of the time. And I was doing my best every time like I messed it up, because on purpose, it’s just that I wasn’t good enough, right? And that teaches you that you can always strive to be better, and it’s okay to fail. So, don’t view failure as necessarily a bad thing. If you learn from it, progress from it, develop a stronger mindset from it. And poker is very similar, right, you’re going to have up swings and down swings. And I think I was very lucky in poker that I had a very bad first year of live poker because it taught me if you’re not going to win every tournament. Whereas I see some players who, probably better than me at poker, who have a really great first year. And then they just learn to spend a lot of money because they’re winning a million dollars in a year, right? And then they don’t win a million dollars next three years, and they’re broke. Whereas I realized, alright, we need to not spend all our money, we need to make sure we keep a very big bankroll. Need to make sure we play in soft events. And those are all good lessons that teach you to hang around and not go broke. So that’s another one. Also, I’m just always open minded trying to learn from other people who are better than me, or people who are not as good as me. Because there’s always more to learn and talking to other poker players on a very regular basis will just help you this even like me, I coach a lot of players who are not very good. And I coach some players who are world class and talking different player types helps you learn how they think, because whenever you’re playing against comparable opponents at the table, you have a much better idea of their thought process.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: Basically, just being open mind and realizing life is not going to be super easy.

Brad: Not sunshine and rainbows all the time.

Jonathan: No.

Brad: Failures, a very important lesson. Everybody experiences failure and it’s how you use it. Do you use it for growth? Do you use it to just give up? Do you try to avoid it because things get too hard? Failure is a great teacher. Teacher of perseverance and grit. And I think that, you know, you’re very lucky to get your ass handed to you.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: You’re just at a young age, right. And speaking of playing the folks that were better than you, I heard a quote the other day, that basically, if you hang around people who are hurt all the time, you start walking with a limp, right? So, surrounding yourself with people better than you, you know, iron sharpens iron, you, you rise up to the occasion. And if your inner circle is very shallow, and not very good than that doesn’t push you to be as good as you can be.

Jonathan: Yeah, don’t hang out with losers. I mean, the neat thing about poker though, is that quite often, the players who are losing at high stakes poker are some of the people who are crushing life. I mean, imagine you’re going to stroke to the casino, lose $10,000 as a non-poker player and think it’s fine. Probably doing okay, or you have a gambling problem, one of the two. But I’ve met some amazing life mentors through poker, who are recreational poker players who want to do their best at the game, but they’re not going to devote their life to it. And they get that, and I help them do the best they possibly can. And those mentors are invaluable to me because I’ve learned many, many things that just helped me succeed at life. Because a lot of poker players are not actually all that great at life. And I want to do my best to be good at life.

Brad: Those of you listening the audience, don’t be shocked by that statement.

Jonathan: Sorry, hate to break it to you. I’m going to have no fans after this podcast.

Brad: So, poker players, not so good at life. And I talked about this with another guy de gaff, we talked about how, especially in a cash game setting, where pros talk trash about Rex, who were not very good at cards. But the thing that’s always missing, like you just said, you know, they showed up, they lost 10k. And they went about their life happily, right? This means they have 10k to drop. They’re extremely successful in another field. And poker is a hobby. Poker is fun. So, this like idea that somehow, you know, you’re good at a game of cards makes you better than somebody else. Like its one of the most annoying things that I encounter among poker players.

Jonathan: Yes. Don’t be an idiot, kids. And realize you’re not all that great yet. Maybe you are. Maybe you are, maybe you are already awesome. But being graded cards not making great life, those are not the same things.

Brad: No. And take advantage of those mentors. Like he’s

Jonathan: Yeah, be nice, make friends. And who knows what you’re about where you will go?

Brad: Exactly. Because these guys like they’re world class is something and they can help and they can give wisdom, just in other areas of life be well rounded, rounded and balanced.

Jonathan: And if you think you should be berating them, or talking poorly about the realize you’re probably going to go broke one day, and you may need a job. And they can give you a job because they you know, they have all sorts of employees.

Brad: Exactly. Exactly. And also, just don’t berate people.

Jonathan: Don’t do that.

Brad: Unless, of course, they’re operating a recreational player and they’re pro, then

Jonathan: That’s the one time you pull out the berations.

Brad: Go. Go after him. You have my 100% just be a dick, like to those guys, because they’re, they’re making poker worse for everyone. So, what would you say, let’s break this down into a daily process of regularly improving your game personally. What does that look like and be as detailed as possible?

Jonathan: Oh, man, my life’s a bit of a mess now. I’m very, very busy. I have two kids who I deal with in the mornings and in the evenings and on the weekends. So, for a lot of people who don’t have many responsibilities, they have way more time than people who are a little further in life do, because they just have fewer responsibilities, right? And I recognize how difficult it is now for many of the recreational players to actually try to get good at poker because they only have an hour a day to study something. Whereas when I was young, I would just play all day, and study all day, and get really good really fast. So now, most of my, if you would call it study, is watching training videos by the best players. Also talking with the best players and then a part investor of a back-end company. And they have a private training site. And I watch all that content. And that’s basically talking with people who are very, very good. And then I outsource a lot of solver work because that takes a lot of time and resources and I don’t want to deal with it. But I’d like to just get solution center.

Brad: What do you mean by outsource? What does that process look like?

Jonathan: I have a guy and I say solve this spot, send it back to me and he does.

Brad: You incentivize him through money.

Jonathan: I pay him for him in a spot in life where I can pay people to do things that I don’t necessarily want to do or don’t want to spend my time doing. And this is the same thing in business, right? Like I don’t necessarily want to be sending out promotional emails or editing a podcast, right? So, you hire people who are better than you at those things to do those things. And if someone is highly versed in banker resolver and I’m not, and they have servers rented to run the simulations and, you know, not for weeks, they, they can run it in three days, then sure, let them do it, I don’t mind. And so, it’s important to realize the assets that you have available and how you can use those to help others. Now, going back to the idea of finding good mentors and good people to be around you, with the recreational players. If there’s someone who you know, is crushing in life, and you know that, you know, maybe you want to be a little friendly, maybe, if they respect you, as a poker player, you offer your poker skills, talk to them, help them get better at their hobby. And they’ll be appreciative and you never know what’ll happen down the road.

Brad: And teaching people also helps to improve your game as well. 

Jonathan: Yeah, of course, that’s just talking to people all day every day. And that goes back to the same thing. It’s, it’s tough because my life is not nearly as regimented as it used to be. Clear back in the day, I would just wake up, study every single game I played from the previous day, every end. There’s a program back in the day called Sit and Go power tools, that would tell you everything you did wrong in terms of shoving or folding math. So, I study every game that I played for about four hours. I would have lunch study, all those games that I played for about another six hours, watch TV for two hours and go to bed. Those every day for three or four years and I was young. And that will get you good really fast. While really faster than three years, most people don’t have to devote three years of their life to getting good at one specific form of poker. But I have a student Blazar Zhao, who just turned $20 into 1.3 million on party poker. He ran a little bit hot, and won a satellite in to 5k and then took 3rd in the 5k. And he has life like really together. Like he sent me a schedule so nonchalantly, like so this is my schedule, and it’s all, every single hour of the day, blocked off and doing very productive things. And when I talk to him, like he’s sticking to the schedule, I was like, yeah, why wouldn’t not? Good, you know. And I mean, my, I guess my day is kind of blocked off to some extent, like, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I wake up, take care of my kids, I have a morning show called a Little Coffee, I do it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9am till 10am. Then, from 10am, until about 6pm, when my wife gets home from work, I am working on something. And in my calendar, I have my routine work blocked off, like make more quizzes for my poker coaching site or make webinars or make podcast episodes, etc. And then I usually have some big project that I’m working on. Right now, I’m writing a book, out of a lot of the content on that private backing site, where essentially, I’m taking the work of other great players and making it more mainstream. And that’s a big project. So usually, I’m working on a lot of routine work, and then also some big project. They’ll come out at some point in the future, and that burns all my time. And then I go play poker, sometimes. 

Brad: Sometimes, you get a chance to play poker.

Jonathan: Yes.

Brad: What book number is this for you?

Jonathan: 15. Number 16 is basically done already. So, 16 is going to be coming out a year or two from now. So that’s basically done. I just need a little touch up work. And 15 is coming out next World Series most likely.

Brad: I do want to go back to one thing you said that I was going to mention, but I’m talking about interacting with players who are worse than you being valuable. And understanding people’s thought processes, like this is something that I see. You know, it’s the curse of knowledge. I see it happening all the time with my students, in my community, where folks are like, well, you know, this is how I think about the game. And then they apply how they think about the game to their specific opponents. And this is not how their opponents are thinking about the game. And when you speak to people who are in your population playing similar games, but on a recreational level, you interact with them. You can get into their head, you can understand how they’re thinking about things, so that you can make better decisions against them moving forward. It’s just a vital, vital thing to do. Never assume that everybody is thinking about cards in the exact way that you are. Because you’re not playing against yourself. You’re playing against other human beings who are at different levels in you.

Jonathan: Yeah, I think a lot of well, pretty much everyone comes into poker with that mindset of I think people play like I play or they can’t have this hand because I wouldn’t have the sand. But as you, the problem for the recreational players trialing this concept is they don’t have a good player, what a good poker looks like a lot of the time. It’s like I don’t even know what good means. So, as you progress, you realize there are 12 different approaches to poker that almost everyone goes through, from very novice to very good. They need to figure out where each particular player is, because then you have some really good players who think very differently than other very good players. And that may lead them to make specific plays at specific times, right? Like so you just have an overly loose, aggressive player who could be very good and he’s really good at picking the loose aggressive spots, but he’s certainly not doing any sort of like GTO play, but he’s still a winning player and maybe a bigger winning player than the GTO robots, right? And it’s important to realize how those players thinks of like you know, that they are going to be bluffing you a lot. Let them bluff you a lot, right? Set up your range where you just don’t fold. And, a lot, I see a lot of good players in those spots just continue to play as if they are playing against another world class player plays exactly like they play. And that’s just not who they’re against. They’re against a very good player, but somebody plays differently.

Brad: Right. We’re human beings. We’re not robots.

Jonathan: As much as we try to be robots, we’re not.

Brad: We’re horrible at, horrible at being robots, right? Like, you get into a spot where it’s like, oh, we should be bluffing 32% of the time, like, how do you quantify that in the moment and then actually apply it over time, like human beings is random number generators are the worst.

Jonathan: Yeah, so something I’ve been doing on my site pokercoaching.com, is making implementable GTO strategies, call it implementable. I mean, it’s basically like, say, you’re supposed to raise queen by 60%, in queen for 40%, just pick one of them and do it 100%. It’s not perfect, but your opponents are never going to know what you’re doing. And it’s close enough. I think a lot of people see the solver work and they go, oh, no way I can remember all that. They’re not supposed to remember, you’re supposed to have a rough idea of what it looks like, and then figure out a way to actually implement it at the table. And I realize I’m not teaching the best players in the world, all that often, I’m teaching recreational players, who want to spend a little bit of time to go from being small losers to small winners, or small winners to decent winners. And you have to do things that add the most value quickly. And very often, that is just, find a strategy that you can easily implement at a table that is close enough to right to the point that you’re doing better than almost everyone you encounter.

Brad: Exactly. And the, you know, I’ve heard you talk about the hand charts and weighing like, specifically by the hand charts and things like that, like even GTO strategies, their baseline. Like these are baseline strategies that, you know, are not set in stone. Feel free if the situation presents itself to just completely throw everything out the window, like yours, you know, if your button raise ranges, 60%. And the small blind and the big blind, are alternative and super tight will now your button range is 100%. Right? Like you don’t even look at the cards that, you just exploit the fact that they’re pulling too much. So, all these things that that you see, that looks super complicated, always taking a mind. These are baseline strategies, they you know, you can change them based on the data and the information that’s available to you.

Jonathan: Right. And it’s important to realize that charts are baseline, like you said, but also, at the same time realize a lot of people’s charts are just straight up wrong. There’s this push fold app that exists and they’ve recently come out with reshelf ranges, where essentially someone raises in front of you. Which hand should you go all in with, and which hand will you fold? Seems innocuous enough, the problem is, is they forget that you’re allowed to call. And if you only go all in or fold, you’re just lighting your money on buyer. So, all these people who are paying for this app are just losing tons of money now, losing tons of equity, because they just don’t understand that this is not even close to the right poker strategy. Because you’re allowed to fold, call, re raised small or go all in you have four options, not two options. And as you cut off your options, you cut off your profitability and make sure you are studying the right things. Problem is it’s hard to know what the right things are. Here’s why you have to find, you have to do a lot of vetting. Yes, we smart enough to vet the material yourself.

Brad: Which is hard.

Jonathan: Which is hard. Find someone who you trust is what it amounts to, to give you the material that you need to succeed.

Brad: Even if you’re inputting, you know, stuff into Pio, solving for GTO. Even then, you have to make assumptions based on how people are playing. And these assumptions can be wrong. And if they are wrong, then there’s a term GAGO, garbage in garbage out. You put garbage in, you get garbage out, right? And this, then you just get crushed. And you’re like, why am I getting crushed? Like the software told me to do it this way. Well, that’s because the software strategy is wrong. Because 

Brad: Well, no, the inputs wrong, right?

Jonathan: The inputs wrong, right. It did exactly what you told it to do. 

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: Very often, if things aren’t working quite right in your life, it’s operator error. It’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s purely your fault. 

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: That’s something else I learned a long time ago. So yes, you’re going to have good runs and bad runs. But pretty much everything that happens in your life, to some extent is your fault. Like you get to pick the games you play, you get to pick the hours you play, you get to pick who you hang out with. And you really get to craft your own life, you just have to be willing to do it. So many people just do what the people around them do, or do what they think they’re supposed to be doing. And you have to understand that you actually are in charge, and you just have to figure out your priorities, right. Like, for example, I realized my goal now is not to be the best poker player in the world. Because if it was, I would leave my family, move in with a bunch of young kids who are geniuses, pay them all a ton of money to make me the best player I could. And I would probably be like in the top 10 players and two or three years, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. I don’t want to do that right, because I have other priorities. And a lot of people out there they say their priority is to be the best poker player yet they go to work at some job for eight hours a day, every day. And I’m like, sorry, you’re not, because you’re devoting significant time to something else. And that’s okay. And realize if this is not your ultimate goal, that’s, that’s fine. So then, figure out your other goal, maybe be the best player you can with the allotted time that you have available. And it’s a much more reasonable goal. And I think that a lot of people, they beat themselves up because they don’t have results they think they’re supposed to have not realizing that what they think they’re supposed to have is completely unattainable, given the situations they put themselves in.

Brad: Yeah. And it’s very empowering to realize that, ultimately, at the end of the day, you are in charge of your own destiny. It’s also kind of scary for folks. Like I was telling you before, before we started the show, about being in LA playing card 60 hours a week and saying, look, this is what I’m doing. I’m not going out, I’m not drinking. This, this is my routine, this is what I am. And this is what’s going to further my goals, right? But in the same sense, you know, you have crushers who play cards, and then they go out, and then they drink, and then they stay out till 5, 6am. And then they don’t play for the next two days, because they’re, they’re recovering, right? This is all part of it. These are decisions that you’re in control of. You, you choose to go out with your friends. And I’m not saying be a complete recluse with no personal life and fire your family so that you can be great at cards.

Jonathan: It’s not a good strategy.

Brad: It’s not a good life strategy in general. You might be good at cards, but you’re probably going to be very miserable human being. But just know that like your actions have consequences. And every time you take an action, you know, it takes or gives to what, to your pursuit. And just keep that in mind.

Jonathan: Yeah. We need to figure out how to be happy. And like, I mean, sounds like we both had our young age super grind. We’re putting in our 60 hours a week every week. And I mean, I did it for three years straight, and I did not even think twice about it. And then I didn’t talk to anybody. I wasn’t recluse for three years, besides talking to people on the internet, and eventually, I don’t know what happened. I started going out of meeting those people on the internet, realize that’s a whole lot more fun and enjoyable. And yeah, you give up making a little bit of money, but at some point, you realize you don’t actually need all that much money. And happiness equity is very important. And a lot of poker players only think about dollar equity. And happiness is vitally important. So, I’m not going to say like, whenever if you look at a lot of the best players, almost all of them had a period in life, where they just devoted their whole life to poker. And maybe that’s actually what it takes to get really good really fast. Maybe that’s what it takes to get really good. I’m not exactly sure, but a lot of the best poker players did not start off just like, almost no one gets really good at playing four hours a week, you know what I mean? Like you just don’t do it. And playing and or studying for hours, because like you, you do need to have a period of time where you devoted a lot of time. So, try to figure out what you can do that if you actually care about getting good, but at the same time, you don’t need to go quite as hardcore as we did, right? You can, you can play only 40 hours a week or 30 hours a week and still enjoy yourself and do things that you enjoy. Now the nice thing about doing other things besides poker is that poker is going to be rough sometimes. And if the one thing you have going on your life is going poorly, you’re going to feel like life is going correlate. So, I definitely suggest every poker player, get a hobby that doesn’t really have so much variance in it, like going to the gym, right? You go to the gym, as long as you stay safe, you won’t hurt yourself all that much fun not pushing yourself too incredibly hard, right? So that’s something that’s relatively low variance, you can stay in shape, you can do stuff like hiking, you’re probably not going to hurt yourself hiking on relatively, you know, not super hard heights. Do things that make you feel good about yourself, whatever that is.

Brad: When your identity is solely as a poker player, you tend to have super high highs when things are going very well. And then super low lows when things are going very poorly. So, having an identity outside of that, and it’s easy, right? Like it’s easy to become obsessive as a, as a I mean, it was for me. Like all I wanted to do is eat sleep talk poker, and be the best poker player that I could be. It was an obsession and you know, maybe it’s kind of like a relationship, right? Like you meet somebody and you have your two year honeymoon phase where you know, it’s just everything is just perfect and all of your chemicals are firing in your brain and it’s euphoric and great, but eventually the honeymoon phase with poker does end. And you know, you just you keep battling, you keep trying to improve on a daily basis but you also want to live a balanced life so that you can find happiness because this is the end goal, right? The end goal is to live a happy, fulfilling life, which leads me to teaching, right? So, you transition to from the dude that spending all of his energy playing cards to teaching, after, I’ll let you tell the story but basically you’re in New York away from Vegas with, the I don’t know if she was your wife then but various serious girlfriend that you refuse to leave her apartment?

Jonathan: Yes.

Brad: Tell me about the Transvaal teaching.

Jonathan: So, I have always had poker coaches in my life who would help me get better and cards. And I think it’s good. I realized at a young age, find people who are better than you and learn from them, right. And they can really, really, really speed up your learning process. I would rather get good slowly or quickly. I’d rather get good quickly. So, I’m always willing to do whatever I can to find people who are better than me and surround myself with them. So, I probably spent $25,000 on poker coaching in my first three or four years of playing poker professionally, and it was well worth it. I remember one time I had like $30,000 in my bankroll, I spent $500 an hour on 10 hours of a single player time, who was actually playing lower stakes than me. But he was winning at a very high ROI. Now it’s talking to me like, yeah, I played smaller stakes, because I always have a high ROI, there’s no variance. I just went all the time. And like, yeah, that’s actually a good idea. So here I am, like battling with a small, much like a half and half return on investment, making the same amount of money, but having much bigger swings. And also, he pointed out a few things I was doing wrong. So, I immediately increased my ROI by one or 2%, which basically paid off at $5,000 in a month or two. And I just had that skill for the rest of my life, right. And anytime I go to learn a new game, I tend to hire a coach, because I’m not egotistical enough to think that I’m good at everything. And I realized actually kind of bad at all poker games, I naturally was not good at no limit hold’em or limit hold’em, or PLO or any of that. I’m usually a little bit too tight, a little bit too ninny. My first play, I was a lot too tight. I don’t know why it’s just how it was. And I’ll tell you why wasn’t, because in a lot of games, very often, your goal is to play in a manner that makes it where you don’t lose. Whereas in poker, often you have to play to win. And those are kind of different mindsets and strategies. Just like this happens in magic the gathering a lot, where you could make a little bit more aggressive play and win a lot. But if you just play passively, you just went all the time. And so, you play passively, you went all the time, you went all the time and 95% of the time, and that doesn’t really translate to poker. So anyway, where are we going with this? Oh, teaching people. I always utilize coaches, significantly in my life and I realize the value of that. And eventually, I decided to start teaching people as well. And it just became an overtime became a bigger and bigger part of my life. I mean, the way I wrote my first book is, every time I would have a student ask me a question, I would just write an article about it. Like however long I felt about writing, I just write an article usually be two or three pages on a specific topic. And then D&B poker, it’s a publishing company. That was a relatively small poker publisher at the time, but now they’re the biggest. They asked me to write a book, because they liked my videos that I made for a European training site pokerstrategy.com, and they can’t make a buck. I’m like, I already have 500 pages of articles. This is convenient. So, I put that in a nice outline. Figured it out. And it took like two weeks, and I gave them a 600-page book. And they’re like, oh, this guy does good work.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: Yeah, because I already done it, right. I mean, that was fortunate. But I am happy to give back to people who want to improve their lives and want to learn. I’m not so interested in trying to teach the internet trolls out there who just want to talk crap about everybody and cause trouble, which, unfortunately, is a small portion of the poker community. So, it’s also a small portion of all internet communities, I think. But there are, there’s another part of the community that really, really wants to improve their skills, or whatever they do. Like, like me, I’m not going to do something, if I’m bad at it. My dad tried to make me play basketball. And in middle school, I was awful at it. And I didn’t play basketball very long, but I’m sterile. And, you know, I’m pretty quick to quit things I’m not good at, but the things I am not really good at the things I care about. And if I care about something like poker, I’m going to really go hard. And that’s how a lot of people are. And I want to help those people get as good as they can with the time commitment that they can put into it. That’s just something I enjoy doing. And it’s kind of like, why do I have mentors who are crushing life who want to help me? Like, that’s just, I think it’s just a human thing that people want to do. They want to help people who are, I guess, kind of like them in the sense of, they have the same ambition for being the best they can be with. And so now I do that at scale. I have lots and lots of students on my site pokercoaching.com, and it’s a good thing.

Brad: When you when you see people that are like yourself, and maybe at the beginning of their own journey, you know, you realize that you wish that you would have had somebody like you that can help, you help them out, or help you out. And that’s a big driving force towards teaching and that’s why I think teaching gives fulfillment

Jonathan: Yeah. I tell people on my site all the time that I made the site that I wish I had as a young person, because and even today, I make the site that I want to have. I hire people who I want to learn from. So, it’s, you know, maybe a little bit self-serving to make the training site that I want to have personally. But fortunately, I’m in the spot where I can do it, and I can share it with everyone else. And like, I know, as a young person, I really wish I just had somebody sitting over my shoulder telling me how to play every single spot. And that’s what like, I’ve hundreds of quizzes on my site where you tell me what you’re supposed to do, or tell me what you think you should do. And then I give immediate feedback on every betting round. And it’s like private coaching, you know. It’s private coaching, but virtual private coaching, and that kind of thing is what I wish I had. And so, I made it for my students so that they could have the tools that I did not have.

Brad: How do you, how do you go about finding a coach in a new discipline, a new game that you want to play? Like, say do seven triple draw, right? How do you go about just finding somebody, and then paying them a lot of money to coach you?

Jonathan: So very often, the ones you pay the most money may not be the best for you. For example, one time I was in the process of learning heads up sit and goes. I didn’t hire the best heads up sit and goes player, I hired a guy who was beating the $100 heads up sit and goes. And then like 200 bucks an hour, which I guess is a lot of money in theory, but it’s not infinite money. And I learned a ton and got pretty good pretty fast. And how do you go about finding the people? You talk to other people. You ask. People, hey, now we have the internet, right? And you can literally talk right to me or you or anybody who you would, or are interested in learning from. The question, though, is are those people the best people to learn from? And sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not, right? Like people come to me all the time asking for like one-to no limit coaching. And I’m not the best one-two no limit coach, because I don’t really play one-two no limit. Find someone who’s beating one-two and two-five, they are probably a better coach than me. And there’ll be a way cheaper. So, it’s like a win-win for everybody. Right? Well, besides me, that’s fine. I don’t care. So, you need to you need to find people who are beating the thing that you’re trying to learn.

Brad: The people who have, blaze the path before you so that they already have a model, right? So, you use their model that, they’ve spent 1000s of hours figuring out on their own. It’s like a, it’s a life hack.

Jonathan: Right.

What is up you future star of poker, you. Coach Brad here and I just wanted to take a moment to let you know about PKC poker. If you’re sitting there wondering, why? Why is coach Brad promoting this PKC poker app thing? Allow me a moment to explain my why. Battling in cash games has been my livelihood for the past 15 years. It’s how I survive and put food on the table, which makes it imperative that I either test out or seek qualified opinions on all the poker platforms on the market. One juicy fine can mean the difference between a meh year and an amazing family vacation and why kind of year. With that said I’ve tried almost all the major poker apps on the market to date and despite the hype about amazingly juicy games, I’ve come away from the experience unsatisfied. I was just never able to find amazing success against seemingly weak competition. And in one specific case was getting outright destroyed by passive villains playing more than 50% of their hands. What the heck was going on? After many evenings sitting in the bathtub, wondering if I had lost it, I finally dug into the data and learn something that shouldn’t have been too surprising to you. These dudes were colluding and super using their pants off. So, I swore off those free money, decentralized devil apps and decided to go back to my more familiar streets of ignition. It was then that I was contacted by a good friend of mine who turned out to be the Vice President of Worldwide Operations at PKC. Him and I had a long in-depth conversation about security, the ecosystem and the future direction of PKC, and he managed to convince me to give it a shot. That shot turned into an incredible six months with an hourly rate, that’s about five times what it would have been playing on any other US platform. As it turns out, I didn’t forget how to play, I just needed a level playing field to return to my crushing whites. I have no doubt that you, my community, my audience is going to play poker somewhere. And I want to be damn sure that you don’t go through the pain and frustration I felt by messing around with any poker app besides PKC. This is why promoting PKC is a no brainer. I love my community. And I want to put you in the best position to succeed at this game that we both love so much. So, if you’d like to join me in the streets of PKC, simply head to enhanceyouredge.com/pkc and get your invite code to play. You must have an invite code and you must be 21 years of age or older. One more time, that’s enhanceyouredge.com/pkc. Best of luck, and now on with the show.

 

Brad: What’s something you feel folks who are chasing their poker dreams don’t spend enough time thinking about?

Jonathan: Poker? I think that’s the right answer. I think in general, a lot of people are pretty lackadaisical when it comes to actually, really sitting down and studying what they’re doing wrong. A lot of people like to focus on their strengths, and not necessarily their weaknesses. I mean, in life and in business, very often, you are just purely playing to your strengths. But in poker, you have to be kind of good at everything, like imagine you’re just bad at defending the blinds, you’re not going to say, all right, I’m bad at that. I’m just going to focus on playing out of the blinds instead, those positions, well, you already kind of good at that. So, you need to strengthen up your weaknesses. And you know, poker is a lot like life in some ways, but it’s also not like life in many other ways. And you need to figure out what you’re doing wrong. Like, really, really figure out why you are not moving up as fast as you could. You also need to be realistic, right? I mean, so many people just have very unrealistic expectations of how poker is going to go for them. And I had somebody come to me the other day, who said, they’ve cashed like eight out of their last 10 tournaments. They think they’re probably running a little how they should probably cash about six or seven out of 10. You know, and he’s had like, 800% ROI, so but he thinks it’s probably more like, 500%. And he’s just delusional. And why is he delusional because first of all, he’s going to be with eight or 10 results, whatever it is, which is irrelevant. 10 tournaments is irrelevant. And the guy thinks he’s supposed to be 500% ROI and tournament worth five and 30% ROI. And he’s just completely delusional. And that, whenever you approach something from that mindset of the short term matters a ton. And I think, very, a very, very small sample indicates my entire future. That’s not going to work out so well. So, like, what did that person read or study, to possess them to think that is the right thought process? And I don’t know. And the answer is probably nothing, right? Because he’s not actually studying poker. He’s just going and gambling, happen to get lucky. And now he thinks is amazing. So, he’s not actually thinking about poker and studying poker. Yet now he thinks he can become a poker pro overnight, because he’s had great results in a small sample.

Brad: It’s just, it’s human psychology, where you see it over and over and over, right? Where like, guys playing 10-20 no limit cash game running at 500 an hour. And the psychology in their head is like, okay, I know I’m running good. I’m not running that good.

Jonathan: Yes, its normal.

Brad: It’s, you know, I should be running a little less, but then I’m still not running amazingly. And the reality is like you’re on fire. You’re always running better than you think you are. And underestimate just how bad you can run.

Jonathan: Something my very first poker coach, a guy named Bill Seymour, an old, old-school gamblers by like seventy years old now, he taught me, always assume your win rates, about half of what it seems like it is, and spend as if it’s about a fourth of what it seems like it is. And then you’ll always have money, you’ll never go broke. Always keep a giant bankroll. You’ll move up slower than you then you could, right, if everything is nice and calm on your way up. But you will literally never go broke. And I’ve never been at risk of going broke at all throughout my whole career. I started with $50. And now I have way more than $50.

Brad: And 3 at least.

Jonathan: Yeah, I have at least 53. Look, I have, I’ve literally doubled my bankroll on my desk. We are winning, we have $100 bill right here. So, look, we’ve at least doubled it up over the last 15 years.

Brad: At a minimum.

Jonathan: Yeah, at a minimum. And that’s, that’s an important thing, because so many people like in cash games, especially where they, let’s say they’re playing 5-10, and they can win 100 an hour, they actually can win 100 an hour. But they spend $400 a day on stuff. I mean, they’re spending half of their money each day on stuff. And then also, you know, sometimes they’re going to hit a bad run. And then, then what happens, right, because you’re going to have a month where you just break even, it just happens. I mean, I used to play all day, every day at Bellagio 5-10 cash games, and 10-20 cash games. And I think I had maybe two or three breakeven months over like, I don’t know, 20 of them, which is probably just being lucky as well. But that happens, right? And if you’re spending all of your money, or being lazy and going out, no longer putting in volume, whatever, there are a lot of things you can do to really screw yourself up. And you have to make sure that you’re not doing those things.

Brad: Yeah, Ned Stark got it right. Winter is coming.

Jonathan: Winter is coming. It is always coming. There was internet post by a guy ire guy, Craig Hartman a long time ago. He basically said that you can, can and will always run way worse than you think is possible. So, get ready.

Brad: What do you think that folks spend too much time thinking about? 

Jonathan: Bad luck and you know, variants. Because at the end of the day, if you just sit down and put in a lot of volume, volume will cure variants very often. And well, if you’re actually a winning player, right. If you’re a losing player, it’s going to expedite the downswing.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: I mean, there is this idea that if you’re running poorly, maybe you’re actually playing poorly, right? You can be a good winning player, but something’s creeping into your game. And then you might, you don’t want to play whenever you’re clearly losing. You don’t go playing games you can’t beat. But if you are actually good at assessing your win rate in a game, which is something again, most people are delusional about. If you are good at assessing your win rate, get back in there and, keep playing. I mean, put in lots and lots of volume and your win rate will like it’ll even out eventually. The problem is in live poker, especially, that’s a very, very long time. No one wants to sit there and grind for a year. To grind hard for a year to ensure they have good results. But a lot of people really care about the short term. And it just doesn’t matter. The problem a lot of people run into as they play with 10 buy ins in their bankroll, and then they lose eight of them, then they’re like, oh, my God, I’m, what’s happening? How could this happen? Again, get used to it, right?. Don’t worry about things that don’t matter, you need to worry about the things you can actually control, which is mostly your strategy. I mean something else a lot of people are overly concerned about, especially, like once they progress above games, where their opponents are really, really bad, does it very often, you don’t really know what your opponents are doing wrong. They’re doing something wrong, but you don’t know what it is, right. So, if you don’t know what they’re doing wrong, you should either play a strategy that exploits the player pool in general, or just relatively close to a GTO strategy. And that will probably do better than maximum trying to exploit someone who maybe you know they’re doing wrong, or you have a tiny idea. Because maybe you’re just wrong, because maybe you’ve seen them, let’s say continuation by a little bit too often over the last hour. That’s the only amount of time you’ve seen on them. And those, that’s how long they’ve playing. And maybe they just had good hands for an hour. And their continuation betting every time because they had good ends. Now, if you just start raising them every time on the flow when they bet, or floating them every time you’re going to light your money on fire. So instead, if you just play GTO strategy, you’ll be fine. So.

Brad: Or maybe they have access to data that you don’t, maybe they know the guys are see betting against or just folding too often, right? 

Jonathan: Yeah, all sorts of stuff like this, where you don’t even know what’s going on. It’s important to realize you don’t know what’s going on. So the first thing you really need to focus on is making sure you know how to play well, as opposed to taking advantage of people who are just especially bad, because as you move up, those especially bad players go away, I hate to break it to you, that you’re not going to play with them in a lot of tournaments or high stakes cash games. Maybe you get one or two of those players at the table. But most players are not going to be making those plays, those mistakes.

Brad: The obvious mistakes that you can point out in like 30 seconds. 

Jonathan: Yeah, I mean, you’re going to see as you move up in stakes, very often, the number of bad players at the table goes down. And also, the bad players do different things incorrectly than at the previous level. Like, take on- two for note, for example. A lot of people just limp and see every flop and bleed off their stat. Whereas in two-five, they realize, alright, I’m supposed to be raising, I’m supposed to be attacking people. So, to be a little bit more aggressive. So, at one game, one-two people who are too weak and passive. And two-five, maybe you end up with people who are too loose and aggressive. I don’t know, I don’t know exactly what where the line is at this point. But that kind of thing happens. So, to beat the average player one-two takes a different skill, or different plays, than the players up two-five and five-ten. And as you move all the way up.

Brad: Right, it’s the opposite of good players doing different things, well. Bad players do different things bad. You can’t just have one over, you know, one giant strategy that says, okay, this is how I’m going to play against recreational players, because guys give their money away in very different ways. So, you have to pay attention and really focus on how different people are bad. Like it, you know, some guys may, maybe fold the river too often. So, you can over bluff them. And then some guys call the river too often. So, you exploit them by, you know, value betting thin. But if you just apply, okay, well, they, these guys just call too often on the river, right. You miss a lot of bluff spots that you could otherwise get. So, you’re playing as people and you know, maybe you can throw them into a bucket, but create as many different archetypes as you can. So that, you know you have a good fundamental baseline strategy against those players when you encounter them, because you will encounter them and live, like you said, your sample size, like an hour, right? You almost never get a sample size. And then even with the data that you get, you’re not exactly sure how great the data is. So, creating these archetypes beforehand allows you to play better against those guys.

Jonathan: Yeah, I would assume to come to me very often and they’ll be very diligent taking all of these notes on exactly what they think their opponents do wrong. And then I asked how long you’re playing at this table? Like, oh, about two hours. Like how long have you played with this one guy who have a page of notes on about everything he does wrong? It’s like, oh, the two hours you know. Like you don’t know what this guy is doing in two hours. You just don’t know. Sorry. Yeah, you observed his hands and you probably saw four showdowns or something, but it just doesn’t matter. It matters maybe a little bit, but it certainly doesn’t mean you should drastically adjust your overall strategy.

Brad: Right. And a lot of times when people ask for poker advice, you know, they, the answer that everybody hates is the deal, you know, it depends. Well, it depends, right. But to me that systemic of guys, they’re not asking the good questions, they’re not asking the right questions, or finding the things that are going to give them the answer in the first place. So basically, it’s like, a knowledge and data collection game. But yeah, I mean, I guess that’s, that’s one of the major things that separates the recreational from the professional players is the professionals are very, very, very good at the data collection and information collection game.

Jonathan: And then applying it, you know. It’s not just collecting it, but it’s also applying it. People were really good at realizing their opponents are bluffing a lot, and then they just keep holding. It’s true. I mean, it happens all the time, in small and medium stakes, tournaments, like you can just play absolutely maniacal. Because they just all fold everything by the river every hand. Let’s have a set, you know, they have a setting loose. But if we notice that when.

Brad: Yeah. Taking action, and it goes back to what you said, you know, you started out playing real tight, right. And I think a lot of times that that comes down to, you don’t want to feel uncomfortable. You don’t want to get into a marginal spot, because that feeling of and it’s not a fun feeling to feel uncomfortable or kind of lost. But you know, this is part of the immersive process of growth. You put yourself in these uncomfortable marginal situations and then you use learn to deal with it, you learn to grow, you start asking different questions. You know, you can you can play a hit, you can completely butcher a hand, blow a stack for $1,000 and learn a valuable lesson that earns you, you know, $50,000 over the course of your poker career. But you have to experiment and you got to be willing to feel uncomfortable, because that’s a lot of times where the growth comes into play.

Jonathan: It’s also kind of interesting to think that a lot of people think they actually know what they’re doing, but they just don’t. And one thing I’ve learned is I have studied from better and better people than me go my whole career is that, you know, you have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing. But you certainly do not have it very clearly defined, as in some sort of very good system. And that’s something I’ve been working on really hard over the last few years. Just trying to figure out, why exactly am I doing what I’m doing with each of my hands, as opposed to what do I do with my hands? Why am I doing this with each part of my range? And a lot of people just bet with their draws because they don’t have showdown value as opposed to sometimes they actually want to be checking your draws because they actually have some showdown value. You don’t realize it and like medium, like middle pair, right? Sometimes it’s a value, but sometimes it’s not what defines these things. And it’s important to realize you probably don’t know as much as you think, you know, and I realized, I don’t know a whole lot. And I think I know more than most. So, if maybe this is, I don’t know, like I’m not going to say lack of self-confidence. Because it’s not bad. It’s more just realizing that poker is hard. And to be really great at it, it takes a ton of study. And even then, if you study something you don’t necessarily even know how to replicate the knowledge you learned in the future. So, it’s very difficult thing.

Brad: And for those of you listening right now, go to Wikipedia and look up the Dunning Kruger syndrome. The Dunning Kruger effect, where basically, the less you know about something, the more you become overconfident, right? It’s the same thing like 90% of drivers think they’re in the top 10%.

Jonathan: Which sounds like poker players.

Brad: Right? Like, so like, it’s like, the less you know, the more confident you are that you know a lot. And then the more you know, the less confident you are. Because it’s a, it’s this weird psychological thing, but look it up. It’ll help you. Be humble, but also be assertive, right? You need to be humble enough to know that you don’t have the answers, but also assertive enough to go for it and be confident in what you do know.

Jonathan: And you can also kind of rest assured you probably know better than the other people if you’re spending more of your energy and you’re learning smarter and faster than other people.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: It’s like imagine in theory. Imagine there’s like a perfect poker strategy. Maybe I’m 20 out of 100. But the average player like two out of 100. So, we’re crushing them.

Brad: Yeah. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, right?

Jonathan: Yeah. I may have an eye and a half and everybody else has nothing.

Brad: Or just half an eye.

Jonathan: I have half an eye. Yeah, it doesn’t make a difference more than zero.

Brad: More than zero is what matters. What’s some poker advice, some common poker advice you hear that you just completely disagree with?

Jonathan: Well, we already went through the one where when you get shallow sack you’re all in or you fold. Right. I mean, that’s, that’s just blatantly wrong. I mean, a common spot is saying they fold you in the small blind and you have 15 big blinds. If you use your cell phone chart, you get to play about 65% of your hands, which is a lot. But if you use a limp shovel fold strategy to play 85% of your hands. Like, you know, 20% more hands on the hammer in short, become profitable, just because you’re using a better strategy. So, I mean, that, people mess us up with solvers too. And they will run a situation with the option of check, bet small or bet big, without realizing the options are check, bet tiny, bet small, bet medium, bet big, bed gigantic, bet all in, you know, and as you get this offer more options, quite often it’s really splitting up the range. And people just use bad systems, right, they develop a system that is just not good. I mean, I see some training sites out there putting out articles where they really try to simplify scenarios. And like I was mentioning earlier, like, say, have a flush draw, some people recommend, always bet and always raise your flush draws. No matter if it has a lot of showdown value, no matter if it has no showdown value, whatever. Like no matter where the flush draw is very different than the not low flush draw, and medium pair, like you’re going to find the medium pair type hands almost always like be played a little bit more passively. Because they have showdown value, right. You don’t need to get fold with middle pair or at least a good middle bear, it’s actually pretty good hand if a lot of money does not go in the pot. If a lot of money goes in the pot, you are kind of unhappy. So, it’s like people use blanket advice for or you know, just very generic advice for very, very broad situations, that just doesn’t work. You just end up screwing up something. And that goes back to people just wanting a simple game. They want to be able to look at a simple chart, they can’t screw up and says all-in or fold. And that’s not the game we’re playing. We’re not playing all Interpol hold them. We’re playing no limit, you get to bet any amount. So, don’t forget the game you were playing.

Brad: The unfortunate thing you know, they wanted simplify it. But this is a complex and complicated game. But the fortunate part is that, that’s why it’s so lucrative. That’s why it’s a creative endeavor. And that’s why there’s so much room for skill, because of the complexity, right? That’s what enables you to get an edge. So, move away from the hand charts. And like you said, the simple, the simplification of advice, the heuristics based on you know, I’m playing against Jonathan Little, circa 2003 verse, Jonathan Little circa 2019, right. These are two different people that you probably want to play your flush draws differently against. If John Little 2003 is ultra-tight, and is C-betting with a range that’s super strong, you don’t attack this range, right? This is not a person that you’re willing to go to war with. But maybe if you’re over bluffing, and you’re looser, then you start attacking.

Jonathan: How do you know how I play now?

Brad: I don’t know. I would assume you’ve changed a bit.

Jonathan: By over bluffing. I’m too maniacal, probably true.

Brad: Just going to go out on a limb and say you’re a little different player than you were 10 years ago.

Jonathan: Yes, that is accurate.

Brad: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about poker tournaments, what would that be?

Jonathan: I don’t know, poker tournaments are good. I think we’d have to figure out a way to make the winners put more money back into the game. Because like, if you, if I won a tournament for a million dollars, that’s just gone from the poker economy, right? I am not giving that money back, it is locked up. And that’s tough. And you also have to ask, like, what perspective Am I looking at this from? Because what is good for professional players is not good for recreational players. And it’s not good for game operators. No. I guess I really wish for change is that we stopped running poker tournaments and casinos, because casinos take a huge rake. And they, you know, they take away, third, fourth, fifth plays money off every tournament. And that is quite costly. So, I guess in theory, I wish we could figure out a way to get rid of all the transaction fees. You’re going to find that in a lot of industries, as time progresses, transaction fees go down. Whereas in poker, they seem to be going up. And that does not make logical sense. The problem though, is it’s hard to get poker players together to make any sort of change. And that’s just because no one’s in charge, right? No one’s really leading to the crusade. Make poker not a gambling game?

Brad: How would you do that? Like.

Jonathan: I don’t even know.

Brad: Any ideas? You have no ideas on how to eliminate the casinos like well, so look like.

Jonathan: Take Magic the Gathering tournaments. It’s a card game. Its luck involved. But they played this in convention centers in tournaments, not in casinos. So why do they play that in Convention Center? Whereas they play poker in a casino, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Brad: Is there a dealer and magic? I mean, it’s

Jonathan: No. You self-deal, essentially.

Brad: Yeah. Which obviously

Jonathan: You can self-deal poker in theory, you know.

Brad: In theory. Yeah, but.

Jonathan: Yeah. But to be fair, they have a lot of like cheating issues. Imagine gathering. Because there’s it’s self-dealt? Right.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: They actually, so probably off topic, but you’ve heard about the Venetian tournament structure now or they’re raking infinite. Have you heard about this?

Brad: I have not.

Jonathan: Basically, yeah, the $250,000 prize pool. But that’s the maximum that can be. So, if they get in $500,000 in buy-ins, they just take 250k.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: That’s how Magic the Gathering tournaments are run. And that’s how actually a lot of game tournaments are run and that sounds insane. I know.

Brad: Yeah, it sounds wild.

Jonathan: But so why can those games get away with doing that? And it’s just thought to be the norm? Like, how do the norms get defined? Why is poker play in the casino? Yet other card games are not played in the casino? Like you don’t play bridge in the casino. Right? You don’t mean you just don’t. So why hy is this game in the casino and other games or not? I’m not sure. But presumably, the middleman who runs the game makes money. And I think in some instances, not all, but in some instances, it’s become a grievous. And so, we have to figure out how to fix that. I mean, that said, like, I know whenever party poker, poker stars runs the big live tournament, they’re not making money off of that, believe it or not. I mean, they’re taking rates. So, they’re not making money. Because for them, it really is expensive, because they have to actually go and rent that giant Convention Center, or rent out that casino, and that costs a ton of money. But they’re making a lot of money on the online site, where once they spend a bunch of money setting it up. It’s basically like free to make the money, you know.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: So, they’re making it back in a different way. But, yeah, we need to, I wish I could make rate go away. That’s the answer.

Brad: Make rake go away.

Jonathan: Or just minimize it. Figure out what the actual cost is. And run it at that. I mean, the nice thing about being in casinos that in theory, they could just get rid of the rake. If they did a better job of monetizing the players elsewhere, like its fancy dinners, or shows, or gambling in the pit, whatever. Right? If they could figure out a way to collect the money elsewhere, then they could run tournaments without a rake. But apparently, those games have too much rake as well. Because you know, games do so poker players don’t play those either. Maybe they need smaller edges in those. Like it’s a known thing. There’s a lot of sports betting sites are trying to lower their house edge. Get rid of the rake, I think that’s the answer. Get rid of transaction costs. I realize there has to be some transaction costs. But like now, a lot of the big casinos are public companies and public companies’ jobs is to make money for their shareholders. That is their responsibility. And if they don’t do that, they are failing, right? Whereas in theory, you would think I mean, it goes back to shearing, the sheep are killing the sheep, right? They are trying to kill the sheep now, because if you look at a big company like poker stars, they can’t really expand all that much more, just because they already have the whole poker market. So, what do they do? They just now try to maximally monetize the people they have, because they have the whole market. So, what do you do in that scenario? There’s only like, one good option is increased rake. And we’re trying to get people to play more, right? We’re trying to get people who don’t gamble to gamble, which they try to do by using sports stars and whatnot to attract new people. But it’s a tough thing because like I look at it from everybody’s side, right? So many players look at poker from exactly the player side. Because we, I have a player, but it’s not all about me. Right? If the game will continue running in a casino, how do we keep the casino happy and making money while also keeping poker profitable for the pros, while also not making their edge so big to the point that the recreational players just get demolished?

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: Because if they get demolished, they’ll quit, well, in theory. And maybe they will, maybe they won’t. That’s one thing I’ve actually kind of surprised about this. I thought reentry tournaments would go away way sooner than they have. I mean, they’re starting to go away a little bit. Or at least like now I was wondering entry instead of 100 reentries, because just pros win every time, because the pros get to put in X number binds profitably. Recreationals put an X number binds unprofitably and then just makes all the money go to the pros or the casino. So, I don’t know I want to do whatever is good for the longevity of poker.

Brad: You had to threaten the casino in some way, right? To change the Venetians behavior, you would have to create an alternative for tournaments, for the players that would play in the Venetian tournament.

Jonathan: I’ll tell you the easy alternative to really crush that 250k only tournament, because it’s 250k guaranteed with no rake, but any amount above 250k they keep. so, have 20 guys show up. We are all poker players in the world sign a petition. Only these 20 guys are going to play. Okay, they’re going to play. They’re going to take that money, we’re going to chop up 250k, there’s 250 poker players and world. We each get $1. And we move on with their lives. And we do that every single time and he just pays out 200k every time or 250k.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: And that would work. The problem is, is the poker players won’t adhere to that. They will show up when there’s 20 players because I look at the free roll I get free money. And I imagine what’s probably going to happen is probably going to get right around the guarantee. And it’s going to end up being a normal tournament, roughly a normal tournament.

Brad: There is no chance in the world I would play a poker tournament if I knew they were going to go over the guarantee and not put the money in the pool. Like

Jonathan: Well think about this. Imagine you go play a tournament where they guarantee let’s say a million-dollar prize pool. They get their million-dollar guarantee. They’re still taking rake. So, in theory, they’re taking 7, 8, 10 percent on top anyway.

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: So, like every time you play a tournament and meets the guarantee exactly, they’re taking 10% above the rake or 10% above the guarantee. So, you kind of already are doing that if the tournaments are good at predicting the guarantee amount, which a lot of them are shockingly good at this point. But yeah, every once in a while, they really blow the guarantee out of the water.

Brad: You get the overlays.

Jonathan: It’s a weird thing too, because like, say, say they need 100 people to meet their guarantee, let’s just pretend. And you show up and there’s 104 people in tournament. It’s like he shouldn’t play, you know.

Brad: Of course not. Because

Jonathan: And if people are smart, they won’t. But I think Venetian has this idea. This is pure speculation. But they really want to get rid of intelligent gamblers. They want the really not smart gamblers. Because those are the ones who are going to go play their poker tournament, take the money, go gamble it away in the pit, for sure. And then the pros don’t take any of the money out of casino, right? Because they don’t want me to go to the beach. And if I go to Venetian and I win, I’m taking the money home. Whereas if the general goes and they win, they’re going to go right to the pit. So, who cares if the degenerate gets a little bit of a free roll, they’re going to lose it all anyway.

Brad: You’re right. And it could be a mechanism to weed out the pros, which is

Jonathan: Maybe it is.

Brad: Something that a lot of places are trying to do that. That’s another thing that a pro I mean, pros have kind of screwed themselves in this instance. You see a lot of the pros, just making the game not fun for the recreational players, right when we discussed this earlier. And so why do they want to get rid of the pros, because it sucks to play against some pros. So why did that thought process come about? Well, because pros were very, very interested in knowing what benefits them the most, right? They weren’t really thinking; how do I make this game last forever? They were thinking, how do I make the most money today? In theory, focusing really hard on this exact session, you don’t need to be worried about being nice to people in chatting because that might take your attention away from the game, right? You know that that attitude is what has happened to where now a lot of cash games are going private tournaments, or even going private and super high stakes. I mean, that’s a problem. You know, what for pros, right? I mean, but you have to realize the pros do not have a right to play the game. A lot of people think oh, I’m allowed to play poker? No, no, you’re not. A pretty much all casinos are invite only. They just have to invite almost everyone. But I mean, go and go and try to count cards at a casino and do it effectively. They’re not going to bite you back, right? Go, go to a poker tournament, apparently. And I wouldn’t be shocked in like 10 years, if you go to a poker tournament, and you are not enjoyable to be around. They just might ban you. Because you know, they want they want to have a good people to have a good time in their casino. They don’t be annoying people, people there. And it’s a weird thing, right? Because you’re, you don’t have a right to play poker. So, you have to make sure you stay invited.

Brad: Maybe they start hurting some folks that you know, tank in the tournament’s like five to 10 minutes. This is by

Jonathan: Well, now they have time, time bank chips. It’s called the action clock and World Poker Tour tournaments. And it’s great.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: I mean, the other day we I was, I took 35th in a forgotten tournament. And they, like with 80 people after something they had the action block and nobody used our action chips. Like everybody was just going fast. It was amazing. You played so many more hands. So anyway, it’s a, it’s a tough thing. Pros have done a great, well pros, I say pros, but it’s like, I’ve done a great job of the opposite of that to try to meet people want to have me in their games, right? Because I realized, I used to be quiet, probably not such a nice guy. Actually, I don’t think I was ever overly rude. I was just always kind of closed off.

Brad: Intense.

Jonathan: Intense. Well, stupid is the right word. So, I was, I used to be stupid. And I don’t know where it changed, but like I used to wear sunglasses and headphones and a hoodie and never talk to anybody. And I don’t know what switch flipped in my head. I think, I think I remember reading about Chick Reese actually. Apparently, Chick Reese was really good at being great in all the games and also really great at getting action. And he gets action, got action by being friendly, by making people want to play with him. Not by being a jerk, but by being someone who they could hang out with, go out to dinner with, you know, they could sit and have lunch with and then play high stakes poker and win or lose. It’s okay. When he lost, it was all good. When he won, it was all good. You know? I remember there was a story about him flying from Vegas to Texas to try to play in a high stakes game with some guy who happened to be, it was technically like Oklahoma or somewhere to play some random high stakes game against a super degenerate rich guy. He got there as soon as he landed in his private jets. The rich guy was walking out the casino was like oh, how’s your session? It was like, oh, I won a bunch of money. Like, alright, great. Have a good night. And that was it got back on a plane went home. That was his attempt, right? And that’s what you’re supposed to do. You shouldn’t be pissed that you didn’t get to play with the fish. Instead, you should realize I had my, I had a little bit of a shot. Didn’t come through. That’s okay. You can’t be angry. You know, you have to you have to just be a nice happy person and people will want to be around you. And that’s all very different than a lot of pros have done.

Brad: And also, it’s not such a, we talk about this and I talked about this a lot, interviewing different folks for this show. And it’s not like a minute manipulative behavior. It’s not blowing smoke up somebody’s ass. Just, you know, petting them like, oh, yeah, you’re fun guy. Let’s go hang out, we’ll have some frozen yogurt after I take all your money, buddy. It’s

Jonathan: Not that.

Brad: It’s being genuine, just a genuine person that engages people and ask them personal quiet, like just gets to know, develops a relationship, right? Just however you develop relationships with people outside of poker. Just talk to people, like, be genuine, be nice. And then people will play against you. And they invite you back. Why? Because they like you, right? most, most of the time, we do business with people that we like. And poker is no different. Like you want people to continue doing business with you, then just be cool, be nice. And you’ll get invited back. No worries.

Jonathan: You know, I’ll tell you my problem is that whenever I was, when I started playing a lot of poker, maybe like you, you just wanted to be super focused on poker, right? And I was never like, the most outgoing, sociable person in my life at all. And I think I lacked those skills. And I only learned those skills by sitting and observing good interactions going on at the table. And if I can expedite that process for anyone who was like me, who just wanted to sit there and play poker, to let them realize that the game is not only about playing your cards, right? It’s about playing your life, right? That’s, that’s going to be very beneficial to them. So, I understand that this may not come naturally to a lot of players, and some people may have it in their mind, I’m just going to do what’s natural to me, screw helping out the community, I’m just going to be selfish. And you know, the community can withstand a few people like that. The problem is, is a lot of people have started being like that. And well, now they’re ruining the game, for all the pros.

Brad: And as a side thing that’s not good for your future game is like, when you are that way, when you’re very selfish, I guess selfish minded, it’s very hard to create genuine friendships and relationships with the crushers. It’s very hard to add them to your group so that you can learn and grow yourself in the way that you need to when you’re very standoffish, and you know, kind of a kind of a dick.

Jonathan: Yeah. Don’t be a dick.

Brad: Don’t be a dick. This is the this might be the title of this episode. Jonathan Little, call-in don’t be a dick.

Jonathan: That’s right.

Brad: We’ve got a couple more questions, then we’ll get you out of here. Which I guess you already talked about this a little. But what’s the project you’re working on right now that’s near and dear to your heart? Doesn’t have to necessarily be poker related.

Jonathan: I mean, the project that I’m working on is pokercoaching.com. It’s my training site. And it is a big project, because we have, I think over 600 quizzes now. We’re always adding new ones, we have a bunch of homework challenges where we ask people to play each part of their range mean. So essentially, every time a new, I save a lot of time, when a new student signs up and said, they say you didn’t tell me what my hand was, how am I supposed to answer this question? Like, I don’t care about what your hand was, like about your whole range. And thinking about that, and balancing your range on each street and showing how you play your whole range is, I think how you get really, really good because instead of playing one scenario, you’re playing all the scenarios, or at least all the scenarios, given a specific set of actions. We have a bunch of those. They take a decent amount of time to get through their hard work. But you know, there’s a little bit of hard work required to get good at poker. And we also have a bunch of classes. I just released the cash game course there that’s 29 parts long. It’s pretty in depth. And it’s what you need to know to succeed, right. And I’m continuously adding new content there. I’m trying to hire great coaches. We just hired like I said, Jonathan Jaffe, who I think is a great player. And their webinar last night with Lexie Gavin, who’s a cash game pro, who has crushed the cash games, you basically is in charge of Charity Series of Poker, which is also a fun poker related charity and risk continuously trying to work with good people. And that’s easier said than done. So that’s a big project. And it takes up a lot of my time. But I don’t mind because I realized that it is letting me work at scale, right? Because, like I turned down most one on one students at this point, because that’s me spending one hour of my life than of one hour of someone else’s life. Whereas I’d much rather spend an hour of my life to help 1000 people have a better hour right. That’s why I do my morning show Monday, Wednesday, Friday, called A Little Coffee. I think I mentioned earlier where just me talking about something I have a they tell me what they want me to talk about. I’ll talk about it for 20 or 30 minutes. I’ll answer questions for 20 or 30 minutes and it’s completely free. It’s a nice way for me to start my morning, get some thoughts out of my head. And, you know, provide a little bit of value to people who want to learn, right at the start of the day.

Brad: Yeah, I don’t do one to one coaching anymore either. Because like you said, you, we only have so many hours in a day, right? You can’t really scale one to one coaching. And well, you can you can impact.

Jonathan: You can scale everything if you got to think outside of the box. 

Brad: That, yeah, I guess that’s true.

Jonathan: One thing I did a long time ago, I was, it was a good thing. I basically taught two eight-hour days, on a weekend, and I think I charged people like $500, or something like that for access to it. And say I had 10 people, I give 10 people each an hour of coaching, and that everybody else could watch and interact and discuss. And that’s a good way. And then you can take that product, sell that product. And they don’t know what they don’t know what you’re going to do, you tell them what you’re going to do. And then there you go, you scale it. Good job. Sure.

Brad: And but you charge them less, than the one to one.

Jonathan: Sure.

Brad: If they’re not getting personalized, one to one attention and devise and all their questions answered. Right.

Jonathan: Sure.

Brad: Which is what a lot of people

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: Want. It’s whatever. I mean, it’s what everybody wants in an ideal world, right? It’s just

Jonathan: Yes.

Brad: There’s not enough time in the day. At the end of the day, what would you like your poker legacy to be? How would you like the poker world to remember, Jonathan Little?

Jonathan: People ask me that sometimes. I don’t know. I’m too young to think about this. I’m not leaving anytime soon. I know a lot of people, they’re like, how do I get out of poker, like you see all these YouTube poker players there, in poker one day and next day, they’re in crypto or something. And, like, there’s like a flash in the pan, you know, and they don’t want to stick around. But I’ve been here 15 years. Basically my whole career, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. So, I don’t know what I necessarily want people to remember me as, but someone who’s added value, right and made the poker world better. And I think I’m doing anything you’ve taken. Yeah. And I think I’ve done a decent job of that. And that’s, that’s the opposite of what a lot of people do in life across the board. And poker is no different, right? A lot of the pros, they just win money. And then they leave, right? They take money from some people, and they quit. And I want to make people enjoy the game more. I want people to be more skilled at their hobbies, and enjoy their time more, like, here are this podcast, right? I mean, you’re doing a great job of that, and we’re just adding value to people who want to learn more and become better. And that’s great work.

Brad: I appreciate that. And at the end of the day, it’s for me, it’s about fulfillment. And this is where I find fulfillment in poker. I don’t necessarily find fulfillment and sitting down at a table and, you know, winning 10k and going like, it’s nice, it feels okay. After 10 years of doing it, you’re like, okay, well, I’ve taken a lot from the game. The game has given me a lot of what am I giving back, right? And so that, to me, is a big driver for the things that I create. I want to help people and provide value. And obviously, you’re on book number 15. Maybe in another 30 years, you know, you’ll have 100 books. You’ll be the authority on poker, period.

Jonathan: I always, I always tell myself, I’m not writing another book after this one. And then inevitably, something falls into my lap. And it’s like, well, I guess I got after I started this, I mean, that’s something that I almost feel as a duty to my students to provide them. But I think they need to become better, right? It’s a kind of a weird feeling. Because I don’t think most people feel a duty to a large set of people. But my students trust me to give them good information. And when it’s a great opportunity to give them great information falls in my lap. There’s like I have to do it. It would be unethical for me not to do it. And I think that’s one of the main motivators is the fact that people rely on me, and they depend on me, and I’m, I am the, I’m worthy of their dependence, I guess. And I want to do everything I can to help them, so it’s all it’s the students and the fans out there that keep me motivated to continue on the grind, because it’s not always easy. I mean, I was talking to one of my mentors yesterday, he’s like, you need to work less, because I’m working all the time. And I don’t really mind it. It’s not, it is hard. It is strenuous, it is stressful, but it’s also enjoyable and rewarding. And at least at this point in my life, I’m happy with what I’m doing.

Brad: And I would say that the focus and the, how much you care about your community, your individual folks is a big reason why you’ve had the success that you have had. You can’t you can’t fake that sort of thing. You can for a little while. But then it becomes pretty obvious that you’re again, once again, you’re just taking right that you’re coming from the mentality of taking from your community, but that level of care, that level of empathy for your community. You know, it’s one of your, one of the reasons why you’ve been so successful plus you have a pretty damn good URL. And the final question is, you know, where, where can the chasing poker greatness crowd, find you?

Jonathan:  On my good URL pokercoaching.com. I actually got that from my first poker coach, Bill Seymour, the seventy-year-old guy. He was for thinking enough to get pokercoaching.com about 25 years ago. And whenever he decided to get out of the poker face a little bit and retire, he decided to let me take it. I mean, I had to bite off but it was, it was a fine deal and I was happy with it. So, pokercoaching.com. Also, you can follow me on twitter @jonathanlittle. On Instagram @jcardshark. I’m on YouTube, just Google, Jonathan Little. I’m sure I’ll come right up. 

Brad: Awesome man. It’s been super pleasure having you on the show. I’ve enjoyed our time together.

Jonathan: Thank you very much for having me. Keep up the great work. 

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of chasing poker greatness. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the show, please take a moment to do so on Apple podcasts or wherever your favorite place listen to podcasts might be. And once again,I also wanted to let you know about PKC poker. If you’re on the lookout for a new platform where the games are safe and secure and the action is amazing, head to enhanceyouredge.com/PKC to get your code and jump into the games. You must have a code to play as well as be 21 years of age or older. One final time that’s enhanceyouredge.com/PKC. Thank you so much and I’ll see you next time on Chasing Poker Greatness.