Jonathan Little Round 2: ACR Ban, #PokerGOAT, & Excelling at Tough NLHE Games

Brad: Welcome, welcome, welcome my friend at the Chasing Poker Greatness Podcast. As always, this is your host, the founder of chasingpokergreatness.com, Brad Wilson. And today, my guest on the show, coming back for a long overdue round two conversation, is the founder of pokercoaching.com, Jonathan Little. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Mr. Little has been featured at fairly prominently in a couple of controversies over the past couple of weeks, that of course, we’re about to dive right into. The first is Phil Naggy smashing him with the ban hammer at ACR. And the second came from accusations of rigging Twitter polls in my recent hashtag poker goat competition on Twitter. Before we go any further, I want you to know that I’m biased in many, many ways in life, but one of my core values is striving to be as fair as I can to the folks that I interact with. On a personal level, I’ve never had a single negative interaction with Jonathan or any of his pokercoaching.com guys, including Matt Afflect and Alex Fitzgerald, who are both previous Chasing Poker Greatness guests, and he’s been nothing but generous with his time and energy specifically with me. With that said, I do want to make it clear to you that it’s okay if you don’t like Jonathan Little. It’s also okay, if you don’t like me as well. I don’t know exactly why you’d be listening to this podcast if that were the case. But that’s another conversation entirely. Sometimes I feel like we live in a world where we don’t feel safe to have our own opinions, especially if they’re unpopular. And I just really, really hope that that changes in the future. In today’s show, you’re going to learn why Jonathan thinks, Excelling at Tough No Limit Hold’em Games, should be the next book in your poker library, why the hashtag poker goat controversy affected Jonathan much more than getting banned from ACR, how you should go about taking risks in today’s online poker environment, and much, much more. So, without any further ado, I bring to you the founder of one of the largest and most successful poker training platforms in the entire universe, Jonathan Little.

Brad: Jonathan, good morning.

Jonathan: Hello.

Brad: Good morning, my man.

Jonathan: Good morning. Happy to be here.

Brad: Welcome back.

Jonathan: Thanks for having me.

Brad: My pleasure. It’s been a while. We, we’ve grown since the last time you came on here. So that’s a good thing, I think.

Jonathan: Good job. Good work. I see you’re sitting out on the beach now. You got yourself a sweet beach house. I’m happy for you.

Brad: Yeah. I’m just, I’m living the dream, working on my tan, my bald head, getting brown. It’s all I want in life.

Jonathan: Nice.

Brad: So, the first topic for discussion, I wanted to ask you about your new book release, Excelling at Tough No Limit Hold’em Games. That is the book right there.

Jonathan: It’s a good book.

Brad: Tell me about it. What’s the format? How did it come about?

Jonathan: I had a book that was very successful called, Excelling At No Limit Hold’em, where I took myself plus, I think 18 other poker pros slash mindset experts. And we wrote about our areas of expertise. So

Brad: I have a question

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: If this book were entered into a competition, like the 64 best book or books, how do you think it would do?

Jonathan: Which one, this one or the previous one?

Brad: The previous one.

Jonathan: They both do acceptably well. I think they both do exceptionally well. I think it might be the best-selling poker book that’s coming out over the last like five years just based on Amazon, Amazon results is the best I can tell. So, it’s like clearly popular. Also, it helped that I had all of the coaches for that book do live webinars with me over the next like year and a half, which drives sales, which promotes them, promotes the book,

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: So, instead of just having like a normal two- or three-month production cycle for a book, you get a year and a half promotion cycle for the book. So that was good. So, yeah, that was very successful. I thought, okay, fine, whatever. Probably wasn’t going to do it again. Because it was a big effort. I actually told my wife I thought it would be like a two-month project where I contact the coach or the poker player, have them write something for like 20 pages. It would take them a week, they get it back to me in a week, and then it just be done. But ended up taking a long time to make so it was a lot of work. I wasn’t going to do it again. But then I advise the poker backing group. This is a backing group that backs lots of, I think really like small stakes players and then essentially grow them over time to become better players.

Brad: Who are some notable names to the poker group?

Jonathan: Oh, man. So, just here, so John van Fleet is a coach for them, it was named lifestyle. So, it’s a guy Burke Stevens draft Ranger. He was a backer. He became the number one player in the world, 2017. He’s actually a coach on my site now, pokercoaching.com, but you know he’s at the final table of the $10,000 buy in WPT party poker thing today.

Brad: That’s cool.

Jonathan: We have a lot of, The Genomic, you might not know him. High stakes grinder. He won the $10,000 stadium series last month for a million bucks,

Brad: He’s pretty good.

Jonathan: He’s crushing it. Rob Tenean, won the Sunday million twice. He’s already stepped back and now manages the company to some extent though. Cato Lito. Alexandre Mantovani, he is very, very good player. So, these are all good online players who may not necessarily be household names to the poker playing public, but they’re all involved with the poker backing company in some way. I was there as an advisor to help like live poker stuff to some extent because they did win live poker as well. And they have essentially a private training site there. There’s only for backeys and, and investors. So, I was I’d be watching the content and like oh my God, this stuff was great. So, the first project I did was someone there was a book called, Modern Poker Theory, by Michael Acevedo. It is a very, very good book. He’s having a good week. He won 86-80 a day, took second place on a W coupe that, is it was it is? Some, some tournament.

Brad: There, there’s a couple series is going on now. I don’t know if you’ve heard.

Jonathan: There’s something happening right now in online poker, you can play whatever you want, wherever you want.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: Unless they ban you.

Brad: Yeah, easy, are you?

Jonathan: Yeah. So anyway, a lot of good projects have come out of working with the poker backing company. And I have the opportunity to talk with a lot of these people and speak with one of these people about their areas of expertise, which in turn makes me a lot better at poker. And I realize a lot of people, the vast majority of poker players have no opportunity to sit down and talk with the best poker players in the world for an hour about their area of expertise. So, I try to bring that to them. So anyway, this book is great. For example, draft ages chapters on playing the middle stack at a final table, which is interesting and difficult. And he’s developed this limping strategy that apparently works amazingly well for him, it lets them, really just like not get blown off of his equity when they were middle, middle stack at a final table of a tournament, you have to play a lot of small pots if you want to be able to play pots because of the ICM pressure. And he talks about how by limping, you get to play a lot more hands to begin with. Yeah, you’re going to get out draw more often. But you get to steal jockey and play pots, where if you’re raising, and you get re-raised, it just immediately crushes you by the big sack. Latos chapter was on post flop ICM to some extent, which was neat. It’s cool to see like the big stack should be leading a lot, apparently. I did not necessarily know that. Like, say someone raises and you’re the big stack and the big blind, you should call with basically everything. And then lead, flop, turn and jam river on almost any middle and low card board. Because by the river, their whole range is going to be bluff catchers, if they’re the middle stack right in the middle stack, they just cannot block it with anything due to the power implications and kind of cool stuff to see. Now that’s not going to say they will fold their writers but they should pull their bluff catchers. And if they’re good, and they care about winning money, they will. So, having all of that like really clearly explained to me, there’s all sorts of like pie charts in here, you know, and we go through lots of scenarios, turned random pages. It’s good stuff. It’s a good book, high level book. It’s not for everybody, it’s for people who are already probably pretty decent at poker, and are trying to learn from the best.

Brad: So basically, that situation that you just described, the big second, the big blind defends, and then they lead flop turn river, and basically because of range construction, the way that they funnel the hands through, all the hands that make it to the river, or just are typically not strong enough to call the river jam.

Jonathan: Well, to give a better example of this, let’s say someone raises, we’ll go a little bit slowly. Someone raises middle position, middle sacrifices, you’re in the big blind, you call with any two cards, or you know, you raise your hands and 30 best envelopes or whatever we’re calling pretty wide. Flop comes 8, 7, 4. Okay, so 6, 5 makes the nuts. We can have 7, we can have 8, four suited, maybe even off suit. So, we have a lot of nut hands here.

Brad: What’s the depth like in big blinds here?

Jonathan: Any, any amount, you can jam them by the river. So, if we’re 40 big blinds deep, you can bet like three on the flop, eight on the turn all in on the river. Like I’ll get all in that. And you start getting deeper and deeper, perhaps it doesn’t work out quite so well. But you want to be able to put them all in by the river what amounts to because that’s how you really forced them to make big folds. You want to give them bad pot odds and you want to make them fold. So, you’re leading in the spot with all of your gut shot straight draws. So, what is 8, 7, 4, so anything with a six or five in it, you can lead with a lot of nut hands. And you can also lead with like marginal value hands because you really should not get raised here all that often either, because if your opponent has aces and they raise, and you still want to get all your money in, it’s going to be mostly knots, right? So, aces loses. So, by leading, you turn the vast majority of their range into a bluff catcher right off the bat. And essentially the way it works out there’s the idea of risk premium that you needed some additional amount have equity to justify calling off as more of your stack becomes at risk when there are payout implications. And when your medium stack and all your stacks at risk, you may need additional like 15% equity on the river to justify calling it. It’s hard to have an additional 15% equity, even against the range that some are talking, it’s hard to have that that much more equity such that you can call with bluff catchers, even if you know your opponent’s range is a little bit wide.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: So, and again, like is there, if there are no shallow stacks, and perhaps this doesn’t apply? If there are a bunch of shallow stacks, that definitely applies? I mean, someone was telling me a hand yesterday where like he had a set on a coordinating board. He was like, should I bet the turn and call it off? Or should I just check behind on the term and then call any riverbed never be put in a tough spot? And if there are big pan applications, you should strongly consider not betting because you really don’t want to get all in. But if there are no payout implications, or marginal pat implications, just get it in your best hands, of course.

Brad: I like that with ICM implications here, we’re leveraging the big stack and pressure.

Jonathan: Oh, yeah.

Brad: So ICM, from the big stack, exerting it on the other players. A lot of folks only look at it the opposite way of playing more risk averse with a smaller stack because of ICM, but it absolutely works the opposite way to write, when you have the big stack, you leverage the ICM considerations against the opponents that you’re playing against, and realize shit tons of fold equity.

Jonathan: Right. And the thing is, is like yes, you don’t also don’t want to lose chips as the big stack. But the medium stack wants to lose chips just way less.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: Or they want to, they want to, they don’t want to go broke, right?

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: Whereas they can go broken, you can go, you cannot go broke.

Brad: Exactly.

Jonathan: So, anyway, that’s cool stuff that was, that was in the chapter by Florida. There was a chapter by a guy Richard Holdly, named, Chips Fall Online, and it was on good punt or bad punt, because he just went through a bunch of spots where he would run insane bluffs and then run it through the solver and then run through the solver against specific ranges he thinks the opponents are playing, you have to go through and adjust the strategy based on what he thinks people are actually doing.

Brad: Node locking, right?

Jonathan: Yeah, node blocking to see if the strategy is good or bad. And some of his blocks were good. Some of them were maybe not and like a hand history review to some extent where, where you’re doing a bunch of insane bluffs. And it turns out, some of them are good, and some of them are bad. And that’s, that’s cool to know, right?

Brad: For sure. This is the thing that I talked about with my students all the time. And it’s like you learn by being aggressive. This is where you get data points. If you’re always risk averse, and you’re folding way too often, you never get this, you never gain clarity. You never get comfortable playing in those spots deep in the decision tree that may look insane at first blush, however, may be profitable, once you get some iterations in, once you see how people react in real time. I equate it just because I liked the dude. I think he’s a great player to Garrett Adelstein in cash games where he’s played Ultra Deep. He has like a bet, three bet, bet four bet, range on the turn, like the decision tree just expands and he just navigates those situations much better than other folks. Because he gets involved, because he’s aggressive, because he sees them when you see them more often you just naturally gain clarity, right? And then like you said, you run insane stuff. Well, you do it 20 times. Now you have some data points. Now you can node lock and just see like, am I just punting here? And if you’re punting, cool, don’t do that. But if you’re not, great, you get to keep doing that for a long time in the future and realize an edge.

Jonathan: For sure. It turns out a lot of people over fold in general in tournaments anyway. So being aggressive is good.

Brad: Cash games, too.

Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, really all, all forms of poker. Nobody wants to bluff catch off with for all their money with middleware, they just don’t like doing it.

Brad: I know, I know why. I think it’s human biology. It’s feels bad to call and lose. Like it just, it feels bad to call and lose. And because of that, our emotions impact us in ways that they shouldn’t, first of all, but like, if somebody bets half pot on the river on in a cash game, right? You need to win more than 25% of the time to call. Well, most of the time, you’re going to lose, and it feels bad to lose. So, if you lose 70% of the time, it’s a profitable call. But you’re going to feel bad a lot, right? And most people are willing to sacrifice the profitability of the call so that they don’t feel bad. And that’s sort of like how the human emotions get involved and hijack us as poker players at the poker table.

Jonathan: You got to get rid of those feelings. You have to not equate losing money or losing your stack with a bad thing, right? Because it’s not you made money on the play. Well, you made equity on the play, right? And the tough thing is, is that maybe you’re good only 20% of the time in which case you’re losing a little bit or maybe you’re a good 60% or 40% of the time. You’re winning a lot, but it’s tough to know that. And that’s why you have to study away from the table and trust the process. I mean, if people watch me play online, we’re playing 15 tables at a time. Like, I don’t even watch the results at all on a lot of tables. So, I just like to get it all in and move on to the next table immediately, because you have one second to make your decision. And I think that’s how a lot of the best players think, to some extent know or view the sessions afterwards to make sure they’re, especially on like the hero qualified spots and whatnot. But when you get it all in and you lose, it’s not a big deal. I think a lot of people think it’s a big deal. They think their tournament life is so valuable, it’s like their child’s life. You only have two children, and you don’t want to lose either of them. But in reality, if you’re playing poker tournaments with a good bankroll, you have like 300 children. And if you lose a few of them, it’s okay.

Brad: We can’t really get rid of emotions, because they’re just a natural part of us, right?

Jonathan: Sure.

Brad: I think navigating them, staying with them, feeling them and then moving on is what I what I believe to be the healthiest way. And it’s just tough, like people don’t like losing. They have a negative connotation with losing, and it makes them feel bad. 

Jonathan: Why? Why do they have, why do they care about losing a card game? I mean, seriously, right? If you think about it, why do I care if I lose a card game? Because everybody else around you also cares? Wait, that’s not a good reason.

Brad: It’s because we associate, in my experience, I can only speak from a sample size of one, but in my experience through life, I hate losing. Because losing made me feel unworthy as a child, when they

Jonathan: But you didn’t lose if you made a good call that won equity. You won.

Brad: Right. Right. I’m just saying like my association with like, loser, losing, like, what, who wants to be called a loser, right? Nobody wants to be called a loser. We have a negative, it’s just has such a negative connotation. And like, poker is tricky because you, you have to associate winning with calling in a spot where you must call because you know it is profitable, even though you’re going to lose most of the time. And I think that’s like, it’s a very hard thing for the human brain to navigate through.

Jonathan: Sure. I mean, I tried to essentially, like I don’t, I don’t view the results as winning or losing. I view my EV big one and 100 graph or you know, just at all and big wiper 100 graph as winning or losing like when that’s down, I lost, right? But when that’s up, and it’s pretty consistently up in any game, if you’re a good player, then you won, whether or not you want that session. Funny enough, like I’ve had sessions where my eBay for under over, like 5000 hands will be minus 10. But I’ll win a ton of money.

Brad: Of course.

Jonathan: Where it’s like plus 20. And I lose a ton of money. It’s like, yeah, you lost the relevant flips. But I mean, like, that doesn’t matter. In the long run, if you just go through the process of making the plays, that wins you equity in the long run, you will win, whether or not you win any individual hand or the outcome of an individual and when they get on with the flip. Do you feel bad when you lose a flip when you got it all in, getting to one pot odds?

Brad: Me? No.

Jonathan: Why? Because you. I mean you lost.

Brad: It’s true. But I’m playing 

Jonathan: You did nothing wrong.

Brad: I’m playing a different game, right? I think you and I are playing a different game than most folks, especially people who are relatively inexperienced or newer to the poker world. We’re playing a different game that’s like, yeah, we’re playing the Infinity game, where we’re just making a decision in this moment. And we extrapolate it out a thousand iterations and we say, okay, this is a profitable call. And like, that’s it, that’s the end of the story, right? We don’t need to see the result of the hand, we just say, oh, this is a profitable call, we do it. And then we move on with life.

Jonathan: A lot of recreational players get a sample size of playing one tournament a week, or one cash game a week. And if they lose that once per week, they have to think about it for the next week about how they lost, right? Like the guy who emailed me saying he lost with his set against a straight, and like the most, and like how to call it off with any, like top pair better, you know. You’re sitting here the literal set, which is almost nuts. I understand that whenever people have a small sample, they care about these things, but you don’t have to. And the thing is, I really do think that that’s a lot of what does everybody around you do. If everyone around you complains about bad beats, you’re going to complain about bad beats. If everyone around you doesn’t care at all, you’re not going to care at all. I surround myself with people who don’t care about nonsense. And there’s a lot of nonsense in the world. And only very few things you can actually control. And all you control is your decisions and how you present yourself to some extent and how you handle yourself in, in various scenarios. But like, you get it all over the flip and you lose, you can’t control that at all. You made money. So, forget about it.

Brad: If you are, do find yourself surrounded by folks that complain about bad beats that are very negative and are not doing their part in raising the average of all the people that you hang out with, you may want to think about getting different people in your poker circle.

Jonathan: Yeah, find new friends. You get to pick the people you hang out with. Fortunately, that is something you, you get to do some extent, especially as a poker player because it’s like you’re going to work and you have to report to a boss and you don’t like your boss, right? Like we don’t like, there is no boss in poker. I mean, I guess if you don’t like the person who’s in charge of the casino, you don’t have to go to the casino. But it’s not like a regular play, a regular job that most people have where you must go and interact with these people on a daily basis.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: You don’t have to, you can you can pick the people who hang around. But you know, there’s a chapter in the book, Selling Itself, No Limit Hold’em Games, by Alex Carr. He used to be a high stakes crusher, but now manages the stable. His, his stable design said he’s a big owner

Brad: PoCarr, and I guess that’s where the name comes from.

Jonathan: That’s right. And his chap, a few years, a few chapters, but one of them is on like getting 1% better every day and talks about how you can just do little things to improve your habits, improve your mindset. And there’s always this like, there’s a thought of like, what, what is our goal as a backing companies, to make money or to make better humans out the door? Because there’s this problem with backing people, if you make them really good and really like strong at life and poker,

Brad: They don’t need to

Jonathan: And eventually not want your backing anymore, right? And fortunately, we figured out ways to like incentivize them to continue being part of the group. But I’ve seen some other like memos from backing companies and they’re like, yeah, we want our backies to have life leads, like we want them being degenerate gamblers, degenerate sports betters, or alcoholics or whatever, because then, they’re going to be great at poker, they’re going to make us money, and they’re never going to quit us. But that’s clearly terrible, right? But that’s not the approach that we take. We try to make good humans, good individuals, because we know at the end of the day, if they make us a ton of money, great, and if they quit, it’s okay. And also, if we make them substantially better humans over, you know, some amount of time with us, they will stick around. I mean, it turns out, you’re loyal to people, if they help you get substantially better at life. And we’ve seen that beautifully so far. I mean, like, me, a lot of the people here on this book, who are coaches now used to be backies. And they still help, they still help out. They, and they do it for free or cheap, because they’re paying it back or I mean, if you help out people who are trying to do the same thing you are. So, we try to make good individuals. And that’s, that’s also part of this book is just to become great at life.

Brad: Why tough No Limit hold’em games?

Jonathan: Oh, boy. So, I had to figure out a title for this book. We knew we did not want to do excelling at no limit hold’em 2. Because it turns out, if you put a 2 or 3 or 4 on a book, it doesn’t sell very well. So, we had to come up with a different name. We wanted excelling in it so that I could continue with a series of some sort, because there are not really any compilation books that have lots of authors involved. And, you know, it’s pretty, it works. It works, right? It works well enough.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: So, we knew we wanted to be excelling at something. First topic was, our first concept was like selling it online no Limit hold’em tournaments. Because it’s, it is geared towards terms. So, it’s not purely tournaments. But whenever you say online and tournaments, you just excluded cash game players and live players, right?

Brad: Right. That’s stupid.

Jonathan: So okay, we can’t say online. We can’t say tournaments. What do we do? We’ve, are, we suddenly not been able to give us very many words, because it’s not really about online poker. And it’s not really about tournaments. But it is about beating tough games. It is about playing against good players, and playing in games where your opponents, there’s not obviously terrible. We actually do have two chapters on playing against people who have big leads right in the beginning. But really, that’s not all that hard to do. Like your opponent’s only call the shots on the river, like, you know, he’s just bluffing a lot, right? Like that’s

Brad: In tournament too, like, the deeper they typically get, I mean, the tougher the field gets, right, like in live tournaments, you know, even a 3k, that’s likely to be very soft as it gets down to a couple of tables. It’s substantially harder to play the last two or three tables, then, you know, at the beginning, right?

Jonathan: For sure. And a lot of these players are like, they’re literally playing the highest stakes games online. And they are battling against the toughest players. And I wanted to be able to share that thought process and experience with people because if you can beat the best players in the world, you can also beat the players who are not the best players in the world. You will just have a bigger win rate against those players. And I wanted to share that. So, what, what exactly do these players play for the most part? It’s tough, no limit hold’em games. And so that, that’s why I went with that title. You can get it at jlpoker.com/excellingtough. E-X-C-E-L-L-I-N-G-T-O-U-G-H

Brad: Also, there will be a link click through on the Show page for excelling at tough no limit hold’em games.

Jonathan: Maybe I should not have games there. I don’t know, party title stuff, target title stuff, because we also have to think about what if we do another one in the future when we call that.

Brad: There’s a lot to think about. I write a daily newsletter and every day I look at the subject heading and I just am horrified that I have to come up with a new subject every day. I’m like, oh, another one.

Jonathan: Every day is a lot man. You put out a lot of great work. It’s tough. It’s tough. You, it’s hard to put out content regularly. I know I did a blog every week. Like, I decided to do a written blog. It was a new for a year, usually strategy or something. And I did it ended up being for like five years. And, like some people were reading it and some people weren’t. Like, it was it was fine. Like YouTube was substantially better. My trainings are substantially better in terms of viewership.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: Eventually, I stopped doing it to some extent. now, we just make a lot of YouTube videos and whatnot. But it’s hard to write something every week, and you’re going to every day. You’re crazy.

Brad: I blame Jason Sue. He, he writes a daily newsletter and he’s like, and also Assassin Otto writes a daily newsletter and like,

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: I’m like, okay, Assassin Otto’s doing it, Jason Sue’s doing it, I’m going to do it. And I do do it. It is, I take the weekends off, and I let Jason Sue have Monday. I enjoy doing it. I’ve learned that like, the more emotional you get in the newsletter, actually, it’s like, the more vulnerable you are about talking about your own struggles, the more it resonates with folks. I did one newsletter that I’m never going to make public, but the newsletter read it. And it was about my dad, and it was about, there was no poker, you know. It’s just like, I started writing and there was a blank page and my dad is sick. And I just, it was on my heart. And I just wrote it. And like I was, it took me an hour and I was crying like most of the time. And like the headline was like, No Poker, A Personal Story. And I was terrified. I sent it to my beta readers. And I was like, I don’t know if I can send this. And like, they’re like, you have to. And I sent it. I got, you know, my list at that point was maybe two weeks old. So, there was 80 people on it. And like five people sent me replied, and with well wishes and like, you know, it was great. It was, it did all the things. And I think it’s like, I don’t know, it’s a project that I’m enjoying. But it is very difficult to do on a daily basis.

Jonathan: I will tell you, as someone who makes content, if you ever, if it ever becomes a grind to recognize you do not have to do it.

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: And you can do it a little bit less. Like I mean, I mean, I’ve started a lot of projects. And the thing is, if you start something that’s open ended, like I have a weekly poker hand podcast,

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: That, that is fine. It’s good, generates content, whatever. But like, sometimes it’s a grind to make it where I make a review hand every week, and it doesn’t take long. It takes 20 minutes or something. It’s like, I don’t really want to do this today. And so luckily, it’s only once a week, so I can kind of you know, kick it down the,

Brad: Kick it down the road. Yeah.

Jonathan: But when does it end? The answer is that it never ends. So, whenever you signed up for this thing to do it, you did not necessarily have an end date in place, but at some point, it will end and when you’re not enjoying it, and you’re not loving it. And it’s not valuable for whatever reason. I mean, email newsletters are very valuable. I know the power of emailing people and getting to know people and interacting with people.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: But if you ever, you don’t got to do it every day, it’s all I’m going to say. You don’t have to do it every day. Because I have felt the pressure of these obligations myself, and I know that it will, it’ll weigh on you to some extent,

Brad: For sure. And I will say this, like, I’m not just kind of out there on a limb. I am actively reading on like, increasing my speed of writing in a quick way. So basically, like I am learning about copyrighting, I’m learning about writing faster and increasing the speed and all these things. So like right now I feel, you know, I’m in the nation, early stages that will hopefully improve as time goes along.

Jonathan: Well good. Enjoy the process and make the most of it.

Jonathan: Thank you, sir. Speaking of the process, want to segue to a little controversy that maybe folks have heard about now. Actually, to be more specific, you’ve had multiple controversies in the lineup.

Jonathan: I want to make this very clear. I do not like or want controversy. I tried to not fight with anyone. I want there to be nothing but peace in the world. And for some reason people like to fight with me. Okay, go ahead.

Brad: You are one of the bigger names in the poker world. The same, you know, Negreanu effect, right? When Doug Polk goes after Negreanu, well Negreanu’s maybe the biggest name in poker, one of the top three, and that just is going to get engagement because some people love Negreanu and they’re going to reply, and then some people don’t like Negreanu, and they’re going to reply and like when you’re polarized like that, you get tons of engagement. And so like, the more successful that Jonathan Little is, well, you’re a target.

Jonathan: Or I guess I don’t really view myself as a polarizing figure, though, right? Like Negreanu’s social stuff is polarizing, and I think everyone agrees with this.

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: He probably does as well. Whereas I don’t think I’m doing anything that’s all that polarizing. But hey, maybe I am. Maybe I’m lacking self-awareness in this instance.

Brad: I want to talk about ACR because there is one aspect of this ACR thing that was curious to me. First of all, for those who don’t know, Jonathan Little is no longer welcome at America’s cardroom. He’s very upset about it. It was the best place to play

Jonathan: I’m not upset about it. Okay, go ahead.

Brad: The best place to play in the whole wide world. I hope my audience knows, I’m being sarcastic. I have always hated ACR. Like, I have never promoted, wanted to promote them. ACR has been like, they’re, they’re like the worst of the worst to me, forever and ever. Amen. But you mean

Jonathan: Brad, you know, you’re going to be banned now. Like immediately, because what you just said is literally what I got banned for. But, but wait, you said it way more harshly.

Brad: Yeah. I don’t have an account there though.

Jonathan: Oh,

Brad: So, I 

Jonathan: You know yourself.

Brad: I’m self-banned, right?

Jonathan: Okay. I see.

Brad: I don’t play tournaments. So, like, that’s the value to me. And ACR is like, if you want to play tournaments, they’re a good decent platform, because they have a lot of volume, right? They have a big player base. And so, for tournaments, I think it’s a decent site to play on. But you got banned. How, tell me how did this come about? Was it out of the blue? How did, how did it go down?

Jonathan: You want the long story or the short story?

Brad: Well, we got a little bit of time. Let’s, we’ll start long. And then maybe we’ll wrap it up at short. If it goes too long.

Jonathan: Okay. Okay. So, I have a lot of people who I teach to play poker. Not sure anybody, very many people know this. It seems like they think I teach about seven people. But it’s, many, many, many multiples of this. Okay. So, my job is to make sure my students win as much money as they can, slash, lose as little money as they can, right. And one easy way to open yourself up to a disaster is to have a lot of money somewhere and then have it all taken. For example, say you’re playing on an unlicensed, unregulated or illegal poker site and they get closed by the government, they run off with your money, they go bankrupt, whatever. There are many reasons why these companies go broke. It’s happened multiple times over 

Brad: Yes.

Jonathan: The last 10 years.

Brad: This is not a conspiracy. This is

Jonathan: It’s not.

Brad: A thing that has happened that I can say I have personally dealt with and anybody that’s been in poker for a long time

Jonathan: What’s happened to you?

Brad: I mean, Black Friday, right?

Jonathan: Okay, so what happened to on Black Friday? Because a lot of people were not allowed around back then tell us what happened to you.

Brad: I was at a flag football tournament.

Jonathan: Don’t get emotional. It’s like, oh, my God, like I just hit you in the chest.

Brad: Yeah. No. So, I was at a flag football tournament. My phone was off. I played a game. I was in Florida. I turned my phone on and looked at it. And I had about 10 text messages from people that I rarely talked to asking if I’m okay. And I was like, holy fuck. And like, then I saw that the sites had been, you know, the domain names had been seized. And initially, it was just shock, for me. It was like, okay, well, there’s going to be a solution relatively soon, like, we’ll get regulated. Maybe in the next couple years. I’ll transition to live poker. It was more shock at first. My money was gone. And my money was on the absolute or ultimate bet. And

Jonathan: You’re on the bad one.

Brad: I was on the bad one. Effectively, I was fired, you know. I didn’t realize I could get fired as a professional poker player. And I, my ability to make money was really the biggest thing that I lost.

Jonathan: Did you have any money on there, like a lot of money or low money?

Brad: No, I was on a downswing, actually. So, I lost 9k. And I actually felt pretty lucky that I was in the middle of a big downswing. And I only had 9k on there.

Jonathan: So, I’ve had multiple emails, multiple times over the sites go down for people who said, I had all of my poker money on the site. And now it’s gone. And to be fair, with like, the Full Tilt money, people have not gone that back, what it was three or four years later, my money was on PokerStars. I was lucky to go back almost immediately. Like, I could have easily had it on Full Tilt or ultimate better whenever. There’s no reason why I could have been safe.

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: I, and a lot of people did not, we’re not around for this experience, right? And there are a lot of people who are new to the poker world. Like I see people getting into the poker world all the time. And some people think, like poker is probably not growing quickly or growing much at all. But that’s because people are quitting poker and more people are coming in. So, it’s like you know, maintaining. So, people are coming into poker, and they have not experienced any of this, right? They do not know that this site is a 100% safe, right? And I had an issue with the back that I heard two of ACRs paid representatives saying this site is safer than a US Bank, which is insured by the government, you can have what 250k in a bank, if the bank goes broke, the government will give you your money back. Obviously, these sites are not as safe as a bank. That should be clear. So, I made a video on YouTube explaining these sites are unlicensed and unregulated in America, which is definitively true.

Brad: Yep.

Jonathan: I showed how some of these companies have gone broke in the past. Sometimes it went okay for the player, sometimes when horribly for the players. And I want to make sure that everybody knows not to keep a ton of money in these sites. The problem with this force, these sites is that whenever you deposit on some of them, they view that as a purchase. Like, you go to the movies, you’re buying a movie ticket, you watch the movie, and it’s gone, right? They think, whenever you, I think they think, whenever you deposit money there, you’re going to play the play, and you’re not going to cash it out, and they’re going to keep your money out the door. That’s how they view it. It’s their job to try to raise your money. Why? Because they’re trying to make money, right? I mean, the companies are trying to make money, they’re not running this game as a charity to try to make money. So, they want you to purchase as many dollars as you possibly can. Because it’s their job to try to extract it from you, once it’s on there. And I’m sure they know, once you put it on there, you’re probably not cashing it out all that often unless you want a bunch more. So, I told my students to keep one day’s worth of money on the site. So, for me, if I’m going to play online poker on that side, I think I needed about $12,000 a day. So, I would keep about $12,000 on that site to play a full Sunday schedule. And that’s it. I made it very clear. If I get to like 20, I’m cashing out, but get lower, I will reload to 12 and a bit every single week. And I don’t see a problem with that. I don’t see a problem with me cautioning my students to not put money on the site that is excess. And I made it clear. I think ACR is actually the best of the unlicensed, unregulated options for Americans. That’s why I played on it, right? The reason I even started playing was actually COVID happened. And I knew I was going to be stuck at home for a while. My students had always been asking me to stream. And I just like, I don’t want to play online poker necessarily for medium stakes. I don’t need to play online poker to make a living. And but whenever I do, because the students want me to, right? So, I figured out all right, so I’m going to play I want to make sure I’m getting a good volume when I get myself potential to win some money. So, we streamed on exactly Sundays, and I would sit there not play for like 15 hours a day. Anyway, I made this video explaining how to protect yourself to the best of your ability on these unlicensed, unregulated sites, so you don’t get screwed if they go down. Or if you do get screwed it’s minimal.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: In the video, I talked about how ECR has a good marketing department. They, they do a great job of getting known to Americans. And I said they employ some mid-tier pros to promote their site. I didn’t think that was offensive at all. And if anything, I thought it was like kind of kind to their pros, because I didn’t even know any of them. Apparently some of them took great offense with the fact that I call them mid-tier pros because they think they’re as good as, let’s say GGS roster with Theodore and Brandon Negreanu. Those are top tier pros, because they are very well known. They have 100,000 Twitter followers, and they have $20 million in tournament cashes. I’m not a top tier pro online. And I want to make that clear as well. I didn’t think I was being offensive. But one of them took offense. So, he made a video where he essentially slandered me and said that I got a lot of things wrong. He said that I’ve, I’m multi counted in the past, which I did not. I did get in trouble on Full Tilt a long time ago for sharing my account with someone, full disclosure.

Brad: Yes.

Jonathan: And that was a big mistake. I’ve mentioned it in my content many times. I apologize when this happened,

Brad: How old were you when this happened? Because I

Jonathan: 23 or 24, or something like that. So, I was a young dumb kid.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: I mean,

Brad: Your red pro that had 100% rake back on full tilt.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: Basically, you shared your account so that somebody else could get the rake back effectively.

Jonathan: Correct.

Brad: Did you get paid an hourly rate as well?

Jonathan: I did get paid an hourly rate as well. And I was gaming the system. I mean, I’m not going to try to justify any bit because it was definitely wrong. But I knew multiple other red pros, were doing the exact same thing, just not on such a high level that I was doing it. And I guess, again, I’m not trying to rationalize this. But I, I could have put in all of the volume that was actually played on the account. Good. I mean, people see me streaming today playing, you know, 16-hour sessions, 15 tabling the whole time, like, that’s how I play online poker. So anyway, anyway, that happened. I got banned. They took $250,000 out of my account, and I apologized to them and to the poker world. They, I asked to be unbanned, they unbanned me, let me play again.

Brad: This is full tilt.

Jonathan: This is full tilt.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: I had a big score on their cash out right before Black Friday at three, $320,000 cash, cashed it out. And I hit my bank account two days before Black Friday. I was lucky as it could be. But, yeah, like, so I did do that. But they said that I was multi accounting which I did not multi accounting is different than what I did. Because multi accounting implies you have multiple accounts in the same game. You’re colluding against the other players.

Brad: Justin Bonomo famously multi accounted, right? It’s like you, basically you have two accounts, and you have one tournament, and you just entered the tournament twice.

Jonathan: Twice or three times or four times or five times or whatever.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: And yeah, that’s many, look, what I what I did was wrong. I deserve to be banned there because I broke the rules. I’m not, I mean, I’m making it very clear and all my content. So, anyway, he brought that up, he brought that up, which is fine. I mean, you can bring up something that happened 12 years ago, if you want, as if it is very relevant. But he’s trying to make me look bad, right? Which, which is understandable because this guy who made the video thinks he’s a top tier pro, but I offhand comments, it was meant to probe. So anyway, they made a few videos about me in this video, whatever, fine. I’m, start streaming on the site. And whenever I’m playing on the site, I’m sitting there playing lots of games, sometimes I get down to only eight tables at a time and I get bored. So, I actually started watching the run outs we discussed earlier, I don’t really watch the run house. But if I’m watching playing only eight tables, I have nothing going on really. And I’m bored out of my mind. So, when I come, that guy keeps winning on me over and over again. That’s funny. Everyone knows I have a relatively serious sense of humor. If you follow me at all, it’s like deadpan comedy. Someone said you would not know if I was joking. Or you would know if I was joking in some scenarios. So, we need a laugh track or something like this.

Brad: It’s dry, dry sense of humor.

Jonathan: Dry sense of humor. Yes. And I would say things like, oh, man, this ACR pro got lucky on me three times in a row. That’s, that’s interesting, right? And then two or three seconds later, I want to make it clear, that’s a joke. I do not think the slides were in any way whatsoever. Someone was clipping out like one sentence clips with my content. And I found one of them where a ten-second clip, someone clip where I said, I can’t beat the shells, they hit every time or something like that. And then literally three seconds later, I say, I want to make it clear. I don’t think this livestream in any way, that’s a joke. So, they’re taking the words very much out of context, saying that I think the site is rigged, but I don’t. And they’re saying I think the site’s bad, but I think it’s the best of the unregulated options. So, I think what’s happening here is they, the guy in charge, Phil Naggy thinks I am much more down on a site than I am or something. Another issue is that when I’m streaming, I’ll have much many more viewers than many of their players who are streaming. So, it’s like the main advertiser, if you call it that, is me being kind of harsh on the site. So, fine, I get it. If you want to ban people from your private company, you can ban people for any for any reason whatsoever, right? So, like, I’m not offended at that. And I have no right to think that I’m entitled to play on the site. I’m not like mad at the guy for doing it. I just don’t like the fact that they are lying to their customers by saying that the company is as safe as a US regulated bank. And I’m mad that they are lying about me straight up, and also taking my work way out of context. And I would hope that they would not do that. I hope that any reasonable employer would not want your employees lying about anyone or anything, right? You want them to be honest. And I think it’s important for, it’s important for people to be able to follow the money to some extent, and my money comes from teaching my students how to get good at poker and protecting them from making stupid decisions. The pay pros by ACR, make money by promoting ACR. So, I definitely recommend everyone pay attention to where, what and what incentives people have to do the same things they do, and when they are doing things that are definitively like false. I mean, you got it, you got to think that is suspect.

Brad: You know, some of the ACR pros, I’m sure are winning players, right? So, like they’re subsidized. You know, they’re supplementing their income by getting people to sign up to ACR. I don’t have a problem with that either. Even though I do not like ACR or how they do business, period.

Jonathan: Well, so I have a question. Would you personally promote a company that you thought could potentially be bad for your customers? Like, would you promote cocaine to them?

Brad: I would not.

Jonathan: Okay, me neither. Okay. So, but everybody doesn’t think that. They think oh, cocaine is going to pay me some money. I’ll, I’ll promote the game. I’m not saying ACR is cocaine. I’m saying that, like, that’s this clearly bad for people, I think. I mean, I don’t know, probably science will come out and say that’s fine. And

Brad: My story goes with, you know, this podcast was initially started as a marketing promotion vehicle for PKC poker. It was the first online site, platform that I believed in. I knew the people, had personal relationships with the people who were running it. And they were actively tracking cheaters. They were actively, you know, it was a good system that I believed in. And I will say that the money that I made promoting PKC makes coaching pale in comparison.

Jonathan: You made more from promoting many different coachings out there?

Brad: I’m saying my revenue is $800 a day after a month and a half of promoting. And that was,

Jonathan: Good money.

Brad: Yeah, it was good money. And that was before COVID. When, when that site went down,

Jonathan: Why did that site go down? Or do you not know?

Brad: No. I do know. Because the American market because Bitcoin was too much friction for the American market. They were not getting the, they were not getting a massive onslaught of players and their games. The games were primarily Chinese games. Because the app has reached critical mass. It’s maybe the biggest poker platform in China in that region, and basically, only the pros were signing up to play on the site. And recreational players were just not going through the hassle of depositing Bitcoin.

Jonathan: You know, American players, right? Like only good American players are playing.

Brad: Exactly. So, they realized this is not sustainable. It’s not good for our ecosystem to have 100% American pros on here so they pulled out of the market. They paid everybody back. They made everybody whole. Everything was fine in that aspect. Nobody got screwed out of any money. But like, after that happened, it’s like, okay, well, I know how much money I could make. ACR is a thing. There are other platforms that already think. But I can’t fucking lay my head on my pillow and go to sleep at night promoting a thing that I don’t trust, that I don’t believe in, that has no customer support that people tag Joey Ingram all the time to help with customer support. Like, are you not making money, ACR? Do you not have enough money to hire some people to help your customers out to deal with deposits and withdrawals? Like it’s just a mess. So, like, if there weren’t, I don’t know if you feel the same way as me. But if there were a legitimate platform that I trusted, that I thought had my audience’s best interests in mind, I would have no problem promoting it. They’re just, that just does not exist for me in today’s environment.

Jonathan: Yeah, I don’t think I would promote any company that is running a rake game to Americans at the moment because that is definitively against the law to run a ranked game that caters to American citizens. So, I don’t, I don’t think I would, I would promote any site that does that, that is not licensed at the moment. Because I’ve talked to my lawyer about this, there is some tiny chance that the promoters get in trouble. And last thing I want is, I have to go to court to defend a company that is operating illegally in America.

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: And I sure don’t need that in my life. And I mean, my coaching business does pretty well. I don’t need to be promoting something that I do not want to. Like, I promote stuff like, like, hold a manager, right? Like I’ve been affiliated with holding manager, I’ll make 1000 bucks a month off of it. But like, I have no problem with that. Because I know like I use it. And I know it’s good. And I know it’s worth it.

Brad: How do you stay like in a world where poker becomes regulated, right?

Jonathan: I would promote

Brad: Like regulated

Jonathan: I would promote party poker, PokerStars, 888, like any of those sites that are operating legally for sure. I have no problem with that.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: Because I know that your money actually is pretty safe in those, right?

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: And I mean, with that, that’s, that’s really, there’s two main issues here. I don’t think your money is all that safe. It’s safe enough. Like again, I have 12,000 bucks in there. Actually, I whenever I was done, I had 19,000 bucks. I have $19,000 there, they cashed it out by the way. You said there’s reports bad but whoever, whatever support person I was perfect. That’s the cash out system was not working properly. They, they did submit stuff, they claim they fixed it. I got the money in like three days. I could not have had a better support experience after they banned me.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: Pre-getting banned, the stuff would take forever. But once they banned me, it was really good. Like they were ready to get me out of there.

Brad: They’re motivated. Let’s get this dude off.

Jonathan: Yeah. Quickly, too. Because they know they drag they’re,

Brad: Yeah, they’re

Jonathan: Butt for month, it’s not going to look good.

Brad: Exactly.

Jonathan: I mean, look, the site had some good things about science and bad things about it. They don’t, they, they took my words out of context completely. And, well, whenever you don’t actually pay attention to what you’re doing. And whenever you take words out of context, and you believe you’re paying representatives who are lying about people, because they got offended, it’s going to make you look bad. And like, I don’t I don’t even feel bad about being banned on the site, because I don’t actually think I did anything wrong at all. And

Brad: You’re pragmatic. I mean,

Jonathan: I’m protecting my students at the end of the day.

Brad: And your audience, right, even your nonpaying.

Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: The people that

Jonathan: Those are my students too, they want to be paying me to be my students.

Brad: Okay, so you all have your audience, your many thousands and thousands of students, it’s pragmatic, with any platform to not leave so much on there that it hurts if they disappear overnight. Like, you know, we got into, you know, I did not think Full Tilt was going to disappear overnight.

Jonathan: No one did.

Brad: I thought there was no chance in hell Full Tilt is going to just poof into dust overnight, and yet it did. So, any site that has a problem that’s unregulated, and serves the US market with someone saying, don’t keep your life savings on here. I mean, this speaks to the integrity of the platform, first and foremost, because you’d be a fool to keep so much money on there that it hurt if they disappeared. It has happened before. Like you have to protect yourself. And it’s clear that the platforms are not going to protect you. So, you got to do what you got to do. And like, in my mind, that is just sound advice. Sound wisdom that

Jonathan: Oh, sorry. I will say I think that they had an issue with that. But I think they also had an issue with the fact that they think I’m saying that their site is rigged on my stream and whatnot. Whereas every single time I said that I was joking, I made it very clear many times, I do not think the site is rigged, but you have to know my sense of humor a little bit to understand that. And I get that. That, if I say, oh my god, the shells hit on me every time. And then I don’t immediately back it up. I get that but they don’t know me. They didn’t talk to me. They didn’t ask me. They could have said hey, we don’t appreciate you joking about our players. So, flaking on you all the time. Can you please stop doing that? And I don’t know what I would have said. I probably would have said, I’m going to say whatever I want. But like I’m a reasonable human, you know, like, if, I don’t think that, again, I’m saying over and over, I do not think their site is rigged. And it was purely a joke. It’s funny. Whenever there’s a guy with a goofy avatar that keeps spiking on me, and it’s an abnormal avatar, I’m going to notice that and point it out. That’s part of a stream. It’s fun. I pointed out your background right off the bat as soon as we got here, because it’s fun, right? And you got to, if you’re going to sit there for 15 hours, you got to have something to talk about.

Brad: I’ll say this, like, I did see the clip, right? The clip was presented to me and they were like, he’s serious. And like, I watched it. And I was like, I know Jonathan Little is a smart guy.

Jonathan: But you know me, and they don’t. 

Brad: I’m like, there’s no way he’s not joking. He has to be joking, right? But just take it in the context of a short clip, where you say that, it can be persuasive in the other way for folks to take out of context.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: Say like, oh, he’s being serious. He legitimately believes that ACR is rigged for the shills. And, to me, it was like, okay, well, I just can’t imagine a world where Jonathan Little actually legitimately believes this. It’s the silliest thing to believe.

Jonathan: But it goes back to the idea though, they do not know who I am. And they’ve never interacted with me. Like, these people who are making these lies, and we have never interacted with them in the real world whatsoever, as far as I know. Like, maybe we play poker together. And they were some random dude to me or something. But

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: I have had no interactions with these people. Yet, they are saying things that are just factually untrue. And I mean, the only thing I can think of is either, they’re paid by the company to do this, or they don’t like me, for some reason. People have a few reasons to not like me, by the way, we can be competitors in business, one of their players owns a training site, apparently. I’ve never even heard of the guy, but on his stream, he was saying some defective, I’m jealous of him. And my site is way worse than his, like, I’ve never I don’t even know who this guy is, you know, and why are they upset? Why is this guy incentivized to say this? This because he has a competing training company, and he’s pulling the Doug Polk method you mentioned earlier, trying to take people who are doing well and drag them down. Turns out he was doing the same thing with Berkey. Because he’s successful, right? Find successful people, try to compare yourself to them, drag them down your level and make them engage with you and then go from there. And if you fall for that marketing tactic, and hate to break it to you, you’re a fish. And that, that is not my audience, and I have to be okay with that, right? But at the end of the day, I can’t really do anything about people blatantly lying about me, besides asking their employer to look at, look at your company and say, is it acceptable for your employees to blatantly lie about anyone? And if you’re cool with that, you’re cool with that, and that’s okay.

Brad: And not everything comes from the top, right?

Jonathan: Is there really, no, not necessarily. Because imagine,

Brad: Well, look, I can’t imagine Berkey Solve for Y guys out there talking shit about somebody and posting stuff.

Jonathan: Correct.

Brad: I can imagine that Berkey is going to, they’re going to fall in line pretty quick when Berkey says, hey, this does not reflect Solve for Y’s values.

Jonathan: From what I understand, Naggy does not do a ton with his players, from what I understand from talking to some of the paid players and the like. He kind of lets them do whatever they want. So, if they can do literally whatever they want, and they’re mad about something, like me, calling them a mid-tier pro, they’re going to lash out whatever the way they want, because the boss doesn’t care. And to be fair, I don’t I don’t know if Phil Naggy is cool with people lying about others or not. If he is fine, if he’s not, though, and he’s trying to run a reasonable business, he wants to say he is good for poker, I would recommend he make it clear that you cannot blatantly lie about people. And he should be a little bit embarrassed that he took their words out of context, because apparently one of their pros presented to him and said, look at this stuff. Look what this guy’s doing. Let’s get him off. I don’t know who it was. But from what I understand that it did happen. And if that happened, he should realize whoever presented that was disingenuous. And if you’re employing disingenuous people, that says a lot about your company.

Brad: Well, yeah, like I said, it stems from leadership. If leadership doesn’t care, then well, there you go.

Jonathan: None of my coaches are there lying about others, I can tell you that and if they do, I’m going to let him know that that is unacceptable to me. But then you have to ask is Jonathan Little, some tyrant that’s going to tell his coaches not to lie about others? I mean, maybe, maybe I am, I don’t know.

Brad: Well, so it’s about integrity, right? Like, it’s just about the integrity of your brand and the integrity of you and like, I have an associate coach. I don’t want him out there talking trash about folks that maybe I have a relationship with or just lying. I don’t know. It’s just a value reflection of the operation.

Jonathan: I want to mention one more thing, though, that I’m not sure people are aware of. There’s a site lock poker not too long ago. They had some paid representatives. A lot of them were also not mid-tier pros, in my opinion. Again, I’m not trying to offend with anybody with a statement.

Brad: You suck block pros.

Jonathan: I think they’re all reasonable humans. They were not Fador Holtz. Okay. Period. Okay, fine. Full tilt just went down and closed, right? Lock poker stayed open, kept taking deposits, but did not cash out anyone for like a year. So, they would basically say it’s in the key word, we’re working on, working on it. And people kept buying and people kept playing. And they kept running ads. So, they were taking deposits, spending it on ads, getting people to deposit more. So, if you know, you take in $1,000, you spent five 500 on an ad, you get 1000 more. And I don’t know where the money went. I don’t think anybody knows where the money went. But the site closed.

Brad: Right. I remember lock poker because I considered depositing on lock poker until I read about on two plus two. And I was like, no.

Jonathan: I mean, I played on it back then. I did like a bankroll builder challenge where I turned 300 bucks into some 1000, before I decided I was done with it. And site, site function perfectly fine. There’s no issues with the site. Besides, you couldn’t cash out.

Brad: Kind of a big issue.

Jonathan: Anyway, everybody on the site lost their money. The pros that left immediately as soon as stuff looks shady, they came out looking pretty nice. But some of them, they stuck around until the very end. And almost all of them are out of poker today. And that’s because they completely lost the trust of their audience. And I mean, I know for a fact they were getting paid by figures to promote per month, because I was offered it. And I said no. And it’s like, they essentially took the risk of this site does not go down in exchange for call it 120k a year. And is that worth it to your reputation? And then to be fair, if you’re just a poker player, and your sole income is sitting at the table I’m playing poker, it might be worth it to screw your fans, because they’re your fans, you don’t make any money from them. Who cares about it, right? That’s how a lot of people think. But if you have a business,

Brad: Now, you just said, talk about a thing that’s going to get clipped that 10 second,

Jonathan: It’s true, like I get the rationality, right? That’s the thing. You have to be able to get out of your own head and ask what are these other people thinking? Because instead of just being offended that people are these people are lying about me on social media, for example, why are they doing it? Now, if you can figure out a clear reason, like, he runs a competing training site where he insulted you by calling you a mid-tier pro, I get why they did what they did. And like I’m sorry that he was offended by me call him mid-tier Pro. I’m not sorry for running a competing training site. But anyway, you want to, you essentially want to figure out what incentivizes people to do what they do. And it does not make sense for someone who has a business based on helping people and trust, to potentially sell those people out for any amount of money. Unless it’s like some giant amount. I mean, it’s tough, because like imagine they said, Jonathan, we’re going to pay you a million dollars a month to promote the shadiest poker site. And if I think that shady poker site is going to stay open for two years, I’m going to get what, how much money is that? $2.4 million?

Brad: 24 million.

Jonathan: 24 million? Oh, yeah. 24 million. It makes you start to think right.

Brad: Of course.

Jonathan: And the thing is, like, I know the financial situation of a lot of these people are promoting these sites. And some of them have plenty money, some of them don’t. And if you don’t have any money, and they’re going to pay you 1000 bucks a month to promote them, I guess I see where they’re coming from, right. Like, I’m not going to do it. But I see where they’re coming from.

Brad: Of course. I don’t hold any ill will against guys that promote whatever. They can promote whatever, if that’s how they’re supplementing their income, then good for them.

Jonathan: You got to hope that their audience is smart enough to realize what’s going on, though. And also, but like going back to the lock poker thing, the people who did take that risk and bailed because the site went down, basically, all of them are out of poker today. And I’m sure they collected 50, 60, $70,000 from before the site went down. Was that worth it? Probably not. Maybe they got unlucky that the site went down. I don’t know. But I’m certainly not going to risk my business for some, some amount of money that’s either short term or long term, who knows. And that I think could be bad for the audience. So anyway,

Brad: I would say pokercoaching.com is many, many, many multiples bigger than my brand, chasing poker greatness, I would still not do it. For a site that I don’t believe in. I’ve been offered to promote poker bros clubs. And the return is absurd.

Jonathan: So funny enough, I, they think I’m negative towards ACR. I’m actually very negative towards any of the apps.

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: So, I think those are those are substantially worse. And again, I’m not afraid to say it, so be careful if you’re playing on the various apps.

Brad: Be careful, but, but that’s not to say that there is an opportunity on all of these things, right? Like, you just have to minimize your risk

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: And make it asymmetrical where you know, you have a bankroll of 30,000. Deposit 1000, see how it goes, build it up to five, cash out, keep it small, so that you don’t lose a shit ton when, you know, the shit inevitably hits the fan.

Jonathan: I mean, like so I mean, I don’t know if you want to go here, but like, I don’t think you’re being cheated on ACR. But I think you may be getting cheated on the various apps because

Brad: Of course. Of course. I’ve been on the app.

Jonathan: So, like, that’s one of the big reasons I would not recommend playing on the apps because there’s it’s like, I kind to get how traditional poker sites work. I don’t, I’ve heard things about the apps that make me not want to play there at all.

Brad: Yeah, I’ve been doing this. I’ve been super used on an app. And I’ve also found apps that were money machines. So, like, basically, you just, its buyer beware, right?

Jonathan: Yeah. It’s not buyer beware, just don’t do it.

Brad: But to me, its buyer beware, because I’m a pro. And like, I see the risk, right? I see the risk versus reward. You have to you have to look at the risk-reward, and understand your own tolerance. And like, if I’m okay with losing 5k, and getting super used, learning that the site is not legitimate. While on another app, I learned that it is legitimate, the games are really good. And you know, I can make 100k in a short, short period of time and get paid out and all that stuff, like, that, to me is a I can tolerate that risk-reward. Just look within yourself. And if you can’t, then don’t do it.

Jonathan: Well, so what you just said right here is something that some of the paid players would very much disagree with for ACR because I said, I trust ACR enough to put $12,000 on there and to play, keep one day’s worth of volume. They said, either you trust the site or you don’t. And like no, I don’t, that’s not how it works.

Brad: He’s getting married to this site? I know that there

Jonathan: Right. It’s like, I trust it a little. I trust it enough to risk $12,000 in my money. I mean, it’s not chump change, right? I trust it enough to play it on the stream, knowing some of my, some of my students are going to go there and become customers of ACR. Like I, you do not have to say, I think this site is 100% perfect and 100% trustworthy in order to play on it. And if I played on that site, and I just got slaughtered every week for like a month, probably quit. I’m not going to say it’s rigged. But your brain starts putting two and two together. And you realize, something’s happening. But I mean, I won on the site and so pretty consistently. So again, I’m not, not worried about that. But I’m not worried about that site being rigged at the moment.

Brad: Yeah. We’re worried about it not being

Jonathan: Worried about closing.

Brad: Worried about it, liquidity and it just disappearing overnight, with everybody’s money into, into, you know, the wind

Jonathan: You know, if for all the unregulated companies, I think it would be really, at least they should consider being very transparent with finances. Like imagine they put out a monthly financial statement saying we have X amount in Bitcoin, we have X amount in the bank, we have spent X amount on pros, we spent, we brought an X amount from rake, we spent X amount on marketing, we profited blank this month, CEO was played paid blank this month. Like if they were just super transparent and they showed they were making you know, 200,000 bucks every month and they had all the money in reserves and all that. I mean, I think that makes the, the players feel way more comfortable, players like myself. I mean, they can obviously lie about all that. I mean, that’s the tough thing about all this, you can, everybody can just lie about everything if they feel inclined and if, if you think they’re lying, what are you going to do? But if I had to run a poker site, I would just be super straight up with ever all the numbers, because who cares, right? I mean, you’re, you’re not going to get seized by the government because you don’t have a US domain. You know, you’re never coming back to America. So, like, who cares, you know?

Brad: It would be different if, like you and I, I think care about the players first and foremost. And I don’t think that these sites do. So, like all the things that are fairly obvious to us as good things, they’re just not going to get executed. They’re not going to get implemented. It’s unfortunate. And I’ve just learned that it’s like, you know, trying to lift a skyscraper by myself like, it’s not going to move, it’s immovable, it’s pointless. I’m spitting into the wind. So, like, I do root for the good guys that I believe are in the, the good poker platforms running, you know, Phil Galfond comes to mind as a good guy in the poker world that I root for, and I wish untold riches on and success.

Jonathan: Sure.

Brad: But until things get regulated in the US market, it’s really, nothing’s going to change. Because these are the players, the barrier to entry is too high. And it is what it is.

Jonathan: I mean, my hope would be that Phil Naggy is actually reasonable human because I again, I’ve had to block him a long time ago on Twitter because he’s consistently trolling me on Twitter. But I mean, this was like two or three years ago. But I hope he’s a reasonable human. And if he is a reasonable human, I hope that he can get his company under control, present himself in a professional manner and be, be good for poker and I that’s what I hope, right? I don’t know if it’s going to happen. But I have faith that everybody can change. Even people wonder why I would even reply to people who are just like straight up lying about me, because I hope they’re smart enough to actually take a step back. Look at not just the 10 second clip, but the 10 second clip and 15 seconds after it and be reasonable humans.

Brad: You’ve heard me talk early and often about how improving your awareness while you’re playing cards so that you make better decisions in the moment and notice trouble spots that merit deeper consideration, is one of the most valuable things you can do to make more money on the felt. In my conversation with the only four time WPT main event champion ever, Darren Elias, he told me that his ability to shut out all of the distractions in the world and fully focus on making great decision after great decision is his superpower he most attributes to his success, and you cannot improve your awareness at the tables without being fully present. When you learn how to stay fully in the moment on the green felt, you can finally have a clear path to becoming the absolute best version of yourself, which leads me to Jason Sue. Jason is one of the foremost authorities on the planet when it comes to playing poker with presence. As a matter of fact, he even wrote the book on it. Here’s a direct quote from Nick Howard of poker detox on Jason’s ability to help you stay focused. Quote, Jason’s work is a new paradigm in poker and performance, end quote. And these aren’t just empty words. Nick has put his money where his mouth is by hiring Jason to coach up the poker detox crew. And as a loyal listener of chasing poker greatness, you know by now that I would not be promoting anything I didn’t 100% believe would improve your poker skills and your life. So, if you want to master your emotions, and perform at your peak with presence while doing battle in the arena, you’d be doing yourself a grave disservice if you didn’t check out Jason’s work at pokerwithpresence.com. One final time, that’s pokerwithpresence.com.

Brad: Let’s transition real quick, we got about 15 minutes

Jonathan: You can go as long as you want. I like talking to you.

Brad: Okay. We’ll just keep going, transition to another controversy.

Jonathan: Oh, boy.

Brad: This one, this one actually, I feel like hurt you personally, on a personal level. Basically, there’s poker goat on Twitter for the audience that’s listening right now. That’s unfamiliar. I ran a tournament. Poker logia, a guy on Twitter contacted me, I ran a tournament earlier this year. We’re finding the best player of all time, which I thought was really fun.

Jonathan: Who was it?

Brad: Phil Ivey. Just smashed everybody, wasn’t even, wasn’t even a contest. He like, came between Phil Ivey and Phil Galfond heads up and Phil Ivey just smashed everybody that he, he battled. But like it was really fun for me, there was lots of, I don’t love the controversial aspect. But you know, many people telling me that I was an idiot for the, the bracket that I put together. It’s basically you can’t win. You can’t put together a perfect bracket in these situations. But Poker Logia contacts me about poker books, because this is like his thing. He runs a South American website that reviews poker books, and he’s like, hey, I think you should do a poker goat for books. And I was like, yeah, this is a great idea. We’ll see how it goes. So, I put the bracket together. I posted. First of all, the first thing that went wrong was, my student is a designer. He’s a kick ass designer. And he designed the brackets. He knows nothing of bracketology. He doesn’t watch sports, he doesn’t know anything. So, he took this round of 64. And he matched people up in a way that was different than the spreadsheet indicated. And he’s a successful professional. I did not want to say hey, can you just do this whole thing over again? I thought, it is what it is. Let’s just run it.

Jonathan: So, he seated the bracket wrong? Is that what you’re saying?

Brad: It wasn’t the seating. It was the like the narratives and strategy aspect of it. I didn’t even want to see the bracket to be honest with you, because I didn’t want to touch it because I haven’t read all the books. It’s impossible for me to cede like, it was just a thing that was like, I’m going to catch so much shit. If

Jonathan: I’m not clear what, why, what’s the problem? What was the problem with the fact that there were two storybooks against each other? Right?

Brad: Yeah, exactly. That was, this was like the feedback, right? Jim McManus went absolutely apeshit to Poker Logia and was like messaging him for days that, you know, it wasn’t separated by narrative and strategy. And I’m like, okay, I get it, you know, maybe next, next time, I’ll do a better job with the initial matchups and putting the bracket together, whatever. So, this was like the first thing that was like, you know, somewhat, quote, unquote, controversial. And then as things went along, it was a lot of fun, a lot of engagement. A lot of people reading the books, honestly. Buying the books, clicking through. And then we have a controversy that happens involving the fellow that I’m speaking with right now, one, Jonathan Little. Tell me about this controversy.

Jonathan: So if this is a tough thing, because I don’t even know exactly what is going on with it, but essentially at the finals, Eric Sidell, who is, was heavily involved with, my book was in the finals, Excelling in No Limit Hold’em, along with the Biggest Block, also a great book by my friend Maria Konakova. We’ve been on double dates together, we shared car rides together, we were texting right before the World Series of Poker about something and like, we’re friends. Anyway, we were there. She was ahead in the vote. And whenever I was behind in any vote so far, I would look at Twitter three or four times a day, whenever I’m behind, I would do one of three things, I would either, retweet the contest with, you know, check out this book, and I would tag all the, some of the other coaches, like there were a lot of big names involved with the book. And they would like it and share it, whatever. And we get a bunch of most immediately, right? So, we would do that. I would also post on Instagram stories. Like I made one the other day, I was going to go get a massage. So, I went and I was like, sitting down about to go get a massage. And then I’m like, oh, I’m behind this thing. So, I walked outside made a 32nd video, went down, got a massage, came back out and was ahead. Because you know, people see that and I tell them to go vote. Or I send email to my email list. I was behind Tommy Angelo. And the round before towards the end, we were, we were chatting back and forth and Tommy Angelo’s content on my website. We’re friends, every World Series we meet definitely have coffee, right?

Brad: You’re retweeting Elements of Poker throughout the competition.

Jonathan: I like Elements of Poker. It’s a good book. It’s one of my favorite books. I’m going to ask my students to vote for mine. But I like this book a lot. So anyway, I was like, having him on my list yet. I’m going to email my list. We emailed 5000 people on our list and immediately got like 200 votes or something. And I know that I have a good social media presence. And when I asked my students to do something, they do it. Okay, fine. So,

Brad: Let me, this follows all the stuff we talked about, about building trust within your community, and having their best interests at heart. Well, that creates loyalty, right?

Jonathan: Right. Eventually, they like you and they will do whatever you want them to do within reason, especially if it is click a link. So anyway, I am going to bed. I see that I’m behind Maria by a decent amount. So, I retweet, do what I said I did a retweet, and went to sleep. Woke up an hour later, I had to go pee. Look at my phone. And I see a tweet by Eric Seidel saying Jonathan Little has just picked up 100 votes in a few seconds. This is clearly great. Now. I don’t know exactly what he saw. I don’t know how Twitter polls work, because I’m not a Twitter poll expert. But if someone does get exactly 100 votes in exactly five seconds, that could be rigged. That looks rigged.

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: I did not, it apparently comes out you can buy votes. I didn’t know you could buy votes. I did not buy the votes. If you think I’m a liar, I guess it could be lying, right? I didn’t buy the votes. I asked my team if they bought, I have five employees ask them if they bought votes. I asked my publisher if they bought votes, because apparently someone was saying that some other books were getting chunks of votes earlier as well. Probably because they shared it like I did. But if I got 100 votes in exactly five seconds, there’s a high likelihood that somebody out there bought votes. Okay, like I’m not I’m not denying this that definitely could have happened. It was not me, it was not my team. It could have been a student who wanted me to win, could have been a hater who wanted to make it look obvious. I don’t know. I just don’t know. Could have been the fact that I shared it. And maybe it did get exactly 100 likes, maybe it did get 92 and Eric said 100. I don’t know. So anyway, he put out this tweet. He didn’t specifically say Jonathan Little is cheating, but it came off like that. And that’s what a lot of the commenters seem to say, that, you know, John Lowe is obviously a cheater. And if you think John Lowe will lie about stuff, obviously, why would he do the Twitter poll too? So, I was frustrated, because like, the ACR thing, I know I did it. And I’m proud of it to some extent, this I did not do. And I do, also do not want to be known as a cheater, especially for something, for anything, right? I don’t even know for a cheater for anything. So that was very frustrating. And, you know, I don’t, there’s nothing I can do. Because now, if I end up winning in the finals, what’s going on, if I win in the finals now, I must have cheated. And that’s going to be the narrative. And if I lose, I’m just a failed cheater. And so, I just like stopped promoting it. I had a plan to send an email out to my list, I have over 100,000 people on my email list. I was going to send out an email to them. That’s going to pick up some number of votes. You know, if you think half a percent of them click, it’s 500 votes immediately. Because previously, I’d only sent out an email to 5000 people. But like, whatever, I just didn’t do it. I mocked it, because what am I supposed to do? Like if I win, I look like a cheater. And, you know, it’s like, if, if you want to win a Twitter poll apparently, I figured out the solution, accuse the other person of cheating, buy them 100 votes, accuse them of cheating. And then what are they going to do? They can’t do anything. So, I was put in a situation where no matter what, I cannot disprove that I’m a cheater. And some people who don’t like me because they’re paid by ACR or whatnot, are going to latch on to this and say, look, he’s a cheater too. So, like, it just, there’s no way to not look horrible in this scenario.

Brad: Yeah, it’s a catch 22. You’re not gone win no matter what you do, even if you win, you lose. And even if you lose, well, you lose. And it was interesting to me that I had to put together a group conversation and ask you all his opinion, because for me like this was like a fun thing that promotes books at gets, you know, shines a light on the authors and maybe gets people to pick up some books that they’d never heard of, that flew under the radar. It was just a fun competition with no first prize by the way. You know, who did it when you did not win anything for winning this thing, you won exactly $0 in this fantasy bracket tournament. So, you know, I understood the possibility that somebody could try to rig it. I just thought why would somebody try to rig it, really? Like what’s the, what’s the major benefit here? And it was, firstly, I want to say that I do, Eric Seidel is one of my poker heroes. And for me, this is like a fairly big statement. He’s on my Mount Rushmore of people that I look up to in the poker world, for his longevity and how he’s navigated the game, and over many, many, many years playing against the highest of levels of competition. So, I respect Eric Seidel. I actually thought him defending Maria, when he thought she’s getting cheated, was a cool thing to do, as a coach sticking up for a student who he thinks maybe is getting slighted in some way. I do think that, yeah, I don’t know, man. It’s really, it’s a bizarre thing for me to have to, like, put a statement out about and to put group together and ask opinions, because to me, it was like this fun little exercise that I thought everybody, everybody would enjoy. And then all of a sudden, it turned into this thing.

Jonathan: Well, that was a lot of fun. Three days.

Brad: You have three days. It was very fun, up until the last couple of days at the tournament, right? Like, I think everything leading up to that point, it was fun. You know, Tommy Angelo, like I said in the statement on Twitter, like, I’ve gotten emails from Tommy Angelo, telling me how much he’s enjoyed this, how fun it was for him. The most fun thing he’s participated in since COVID, right? And so like, in my mind, this is, this is a win. I do want to do it again. I have no idea if you want me to put any of your books in the tournament again.

Jonathan: I will not share it with any of my followers next time, I promise you that.

Brad: I have to now come up with a system that’s not Twitter, that like is more secure, but causes friction as far as people sharing it, as far as people getting to vote. And engagement. I don’t know how that’s going to look, I haven’t even considered it because the thing just ended about a week ago. But, yeah, I don’t know, man. It was a fun thing for me. I do, I feel bad that the shit rain down on you at the end. I think its kind of a silly thing. But I don’t want to call Eric Seidel silly. I think I just maybe, maybe did, but he’s emotionally biased in this situation. And I just, if somebody was buying votes, then they were buying votes, and I can’t track it, Twitter polls are untrackable. So, like, the shit just is what it is, right?

Jonathan: It’s annoying for me, because like, maybe someone bought boats, or maybe my promotions just did this. And like, I don’t even I don’t even know what happened. That’s the annoying thing is that either way, it’s a silly Twitter poll, like you said, and like, whatever, it’s whatever, man. It’s tough. Because like if people think, I already have haters, this is one more thing for them to potentially latch on to.

Brad: That’s, the thing, the thing about it is though, the people that do not like you, the haters, like it doesn’t matter at the end of the day, because they’re going to find anything that they can to try to say Jonathan Little is the worst, right? So, like, those, those people, it doesn’t matter. It’s just, are those haters somehow infecting your other people. And I would say that you have a fairly rabid, loyal fan base. So, seems unlikely.

Jonathan: That’s not necessarily true, though. Because like down the road, imagine someone comes into poker. They watch a YouTube video, they find someone who just does not like me, even though they don’t know that. Later they offhandedly say, whatever they want to say this negative about me, and then they run into me later, they render my content later, like, oh, that guy cheated on Twitter poll, right? That could be bad for business if people are going to be out there straight up lying about you, or making accusations, right. I mean, it’s like, what, what can you do? There’s literally nothing I can do.

Brad: It goes both ways, though. Maybe somebody that’s never heard of you finds out on the YouTube video. And then they interact with you. They hear this conversation. And they’re like, Jonathan Little seems like a reasonable guy. Maybe that person was wrong, and may get a fan. I don’t know.

Jonathan: It seems like everyone thinks everything on the internet is true based from my experience unless they definitively know otherwise.

Brad: Well, number one, I think maybe if you’re up for it, you need, need to like expand on this clip, right, the 10 second clip, make it 35 seconds, and just share it and be like, look, I did not, this is not what I said, this is taken out of context, like this is number one. Like number two, what you just said, you know, there’s a popular documentary on Netflix, my wife and I just watched it, scared the living bejesus out of us, I can’t remember the name of it. It, doesn’t matter.

Jonathan: It’s so scary you forgot.

Brad: It’s so scary. I forgot the name of it. But basically, like disinformation spreads at a velocity of six times more than real information, because real life is somewhat boring. And like we’re in the disinformation age, right? So, like untrue, things are going to spread like wildfire, whereas the true things just don’t.

Jonathan: Yeah, well, stuff when they’re not true value. But I suppose that is what I signed up for.

Brad: Yeah. The Social Dilemma is the name. My wife just gave me a note. The Social Dilemma, but yeah, I mean, at least your

Jonathan: Shout out to your wife. Hello. Is your wife also a cat? Or is your wife someone different than the cat?

Brad: No, my wife is an actual human. She’s not a cat.

Jonathan: Good. Good.

Brad: Although we do have a bunch of fur babies in the house. But yeah, it’s like, you’ve reached the point now where people are targeting you. And people have been targeting you for a while. I think that within any large number of people that follow an individual, a certain percentage of them are just going to not like that person, they’re going to come after them. It’s a part of business. I hope that one day, people start coming after me and calling me a liar, because of my extreme success. And maybe you and I can have this conversation again. And you can ask me how it feels, and maybe I’ll have a different opinion on the other side.

Jonathan: Essentially, my wife was trying to ask me like, what can I, what can she do to help with this ACR issue? I’m like, you just could not understand what this is. Because you’ve never experienced this, because she’s not even really on the internet. And it’s, it’s tough. It’s, it’s an interesting feeling to know that there are people out there actively slandering you, and I’m not going to sue them, I’m not going to take them to court, you know? And like, what, what can you do? You can say that they’re not telling the truth, but then they just say you’re lying. It’s like, what can you do? It’s like, there’s literally nothing you can do about it beyond continuing to do good work and add value. So, I’m going to continue to do good work and add value. And hopefully, people can see from my actions that I have the best intentions of my students at heart, and I’m trying to continue to help the poker world. And if you don’t think that well go find someone else.

Brad: Even, even for me like it’s interesting, because I don’t hold, I don’t hate hardly anyone in the poker world. Like I don’t, I try to see the best in people. I tried to stay positive, even though like I’ve said, fuck ACR multiple times as a platform.

Jonathan: You’re banned, man.

Brad: I’m not a personally, right. But like, I try to see the best in people. And I realized that folks can make mistakes, right? Like the Full Tilt poker thing. 23 years old, for the love of God, when I was in my 20s, I can’t even describe to you how much of a different human I was 12 years later, as a mature adult who’s hopefully gaining wisdom over time and learning and growing and making it out the other side, I try to see the best in everyone. And like, I know that even if this interview comes off in a way that is too positive for Jonathan Little, I could catch shit by posting it, right. Which to me is like, it’s just it’s a silly way to be. And I when I started this podcast, and I started engaging on Twitter, because as a cash player, I was just anonymous playing cards and did not care about any of the bullshit political stuff. One of my major goals was like, I don’t want to get involved in these silly scandals, these feuds between cliques of people, like I don’t want to get involved in this bullshit. And then I find myself being involved sort of accidentally,

Jonathan: You made a Twitter poll. You did it on purpose. You know what you signed up for.

Brad: Yeah, I did. I did. But like, I’m still going to continue, being, staying true to myself and myself is like telling positive stories, believing the best in people, and shining the light on what I think is, you know, the good side of the poker world, like Madison was probably not going to make it on the podcast, right? Like, he’s, he’s probably, I’m not probably not going to reach out to Madison, to be a guest on this show. It’s just, anybody that’s toxic and negative, I really don’t want to associate with them. However, I also want everybody to have their opinion and their own perspective on life, because, like I said, I operate from a sample size of one, and I assume everybody else does, too. So, it’s a tough spot.

Jonathan: The fun world we live in, and all we can do is navigate it to the best of our ability.

Brad: Yeah. Just, just keep doing good. You know, keep helping people out, putting your students in a position where they can be successful. And they’re not going to get taken advantage of by any sort of platform, or any sort of coaches that are unscrupulous, right. This is a thing that like, I’m not going to actively, personally attack somebody. But if somebody’s offering something that I think is bullshit, that will actively cause harm, you know, my number one goal is to reduce suffering for my audience, and the poker community. This is all I want to do. And I will speak out about something like that. But as far as the personal stuff, let’s just, let’s just be friends, man. Let’s build, let’s grow poker, as a community and be advocates and allies. I think Berkey has done an amazing job of being an advocate, being an ally to people. Berkey went on the Metacell podcast for God’s sake. I don’t know how he did that. But he did.

Jonathan: I’ve been on the Metacell podcast too. To be fair, I don’t, I don’t like many of Mike Madison’s stances, but I think he is a reasonable human at heart.

Brad: Really?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: So, there we go.

Jonathan: Even though I think he’s insane.

Brad: Well, that’s a pretty, that’s a pretty good read. I love Metacell. I remember sweating the main event when I believe it was Steve Danamon busted Metacell. Metacell flooded from like the small blind with tins and led into Danamon on like, do straight five, Danamon jams the ace, jack, right. I remember this hand. Danamon, Metacell cries of course, when Danamon turns the wheel, even though I even knew, like back then I’m like, Danamon, it’s like 40% to win. What is this, like the bad beat of the year here? But I was a fan of Metacell. And then like, the parcel thing was sort of what changed everything in my mind

Jonathan: I forgot about that.

Brad: With Metacell. That was sort of like, okay, this guy, I don’t think he has the poker community’s best interests at heart when he interviewed Postle, because that was just a squandered opportunity.

Jonathan: Yeah, I think everybody agrees with that.

Brad: Yeah, for sure.

Jonathan: I mean, I think he gets into conspiracy theories to some extent, and maybe more than most, which you know, it is what it is.

Brad: It is what is. It’s the social dilemma. Watch the social dilemma, and you’ll see why conspiracy theories are kind of going mainstream, which is like one of the problems with the social media platforms and content, recommendation system and all that, but it is an easy trap to fall into believing in some sort of conspiracy theory. And you know, to be fair, like, there are conspiracies, right? They do happen. So, yeah, it just is what it is. But maybe I’m being too harsh on Metacell. Maybe I’ll reflect and come out with a different opinion.

Jonathan: It’s tough because I’m probably slightly biased because he’s always been very nice to me.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: He did sign a copy to a copy of his book to me a long time ago. It’s a, it’s a biography called, Check Reason the Devil; It’s Fun. He said, he signed it, fuck you, Jonathan, will you ruin my life? Now that was fun, because I want a big flip against them one time at a final table, but he’s always been nice to me. To be fair, when people are nice to you, personally, you like, it’s kind of hard to develop a bad taste for them, I think.

Brad: That’s true.

Jonathan: Unless of course you’re paid to do otherwise.

Brad: I’m a, I’m a softy. Mike would come on the show and we’d talk and I’d be like, I’m sorry Mike. Like you actually seem like you’re a reasonable, okay guy.

Jonathan: Whenever I’m talking to him always like no political stuff, no bad beat stories. Period.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: Then we can we can have a conversation going from there. He’s done some wild stuff. There’s been a lot of people who’ve done some wild stuff and I would tell everyone to just forget about all nonsense in life and focus on the things you can control and if you don’t like Mattiscell, or me, or Brad or anybody, go somewhere else and find people that you enjoy.

Brad: Agreed. If you don’t like me, fuck off. Why are you listening this podcast if you don’t like me? I don’t understand.

Jonathan: Because I also don’t like me and they had to make it what I said until the very end. It’s okay, like everybody’s not for everybody. You know, it’s, you do not need, even if you, look, if you hate me, understand that you do not have to spend your time hating on me or hating on anybody else. Go find people who will help you better your life. I hope everyone out there wants to better their life, and the better their lives of the people around them. And you do that by building a community and building it up and helping others. You don’t do that by tearing others down. And so, even if you don’t like people, it’s okay. It’s okay. I realize everyone’s not for me and we can all prosper together even if we are not actively working together and interacting.

Brad: Agreed, and the next time you come on the show, let’s, let’s have a more positive, let’s try not to be involved in any of these controversies. So, we can just you know, talk poker strategy.

Jonathan: I’m already over them. I have a book, it’s selling at tough no limit hold’em games. Check it out. jlpoker.com/sellingtough. And pokercoaching.com is my site. We have lots and lots of good content, I think for us Jocko stream privately for the students tomorrow.

Brad: You have an app coming out, right?

Jonathan: I have an ap. It’s already out, poker coaching app, it has GTO ranges, you can just pull up in like half a second at the table for many, many, many preflop spots. So that’s

Brad: Wait, wait. At the table.

Jonathan: Yeah. Add a table here. I’ll show you. I’m going to show you is this going to be a video audio only?

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: Because mine is audio only. Brutal. Well, I’ll show exactly you. Okay, so you click on preflop GTO charts, select position under the gun plus one plus news plus the big blind or button to make it interesting. Action versus arrays, select opponent position, low jack, and then it brings up exactly what you should do, you see?

Brad: I do see.

Jonathan: My chart, righteous Microsoft chart for that scenario.

Brad: I’m assuming you’re not, I do want to make this clear. When you say at the table,

Jonathan: You know, so like, look what you do, I’ll tell you how to do this. Say I’m on the button with 30 big blinds. Okay, we did, before this and starts while the dealer shuffling the cards, pull up the 30 big blind section. Now take a look around. Where’s the spot, you’re not going to know what to do if somebody raises? Let’s say the guy on your right is really aggressive. We know he’s aggressive, he raises every kind of hold’em. So, let’s say versus raise, you put your put it in the cut off because that’s where he is when you’re on the button. And then you look at this chart and you memorize this chart, memorize this, it’s not hard, hands on the dark red jam, hands on the green call, hands on the light red three about small, right. Now you know if you get this queen ten suited, king jack suited, pocket nines, ace three suited, sometimes you should rip it on him. You know, he can raise a little bit too often. So perhaps rip it a little bit more often than the chart says. And you do that before the hand starts. And then you put your phone away.

Brad: So, you’re not advocating to use the charts in the middle of the hand.

Jonathan: No, you should not use any charts in the middle of the hand, that would be against the rules of basically every casino. Now funny enough if the casino does not have rules against you using your phone in any way you see fit during the hand, they should change the rules, right?

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: Okay.

Brad: They should. I actually think

Jonathan: No, you should not be using a solver during a hand that is well out of line in my opinion. And there should be rules against such thing. But before the hand, while you’re studying away from the table, or while you’re studying anything, I have no problem with you using whatever programs you want to improve your poker skills.

Brad: It’s, I don’t either, it’s a little gray, it’s a little close.

Jonathan: What is close?

Brad: Like, looking at the chart, like right before the hand and putting it down, it feels a little close to me.

Jonathan: It’s gray.

Brad: It’s gray, right?

Jonathan: But it’s not gray because it’s within the rules.

Brad: It’s within the rules.

Jonathan: If you don’t like that, ban phone from the poker table.

Brad: That’s what I was going to say.

Jonathan: They banned phones from chess tournaments.

Brad: Sure.

Jonathan: Funny enough, one of my publishers is a very good chess player. And when he went to the World Series for the first time, he had never been to World Series of Poker. He never been to a poker tournament. He walked in, I was like, oh my god, everyone’s looking up solutions on their phone the whole time. I’m like, nah, man, they’re just sexting right now. And looking up sports scores.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: He’s like, no way. They need to be focusing on their poker, like not theirs, they’re just messing around.

Brad: Yeah, welcome to poker.

Jonathan: But I mean, like, if you sit in any high roller tournaments, you see, basically every player, whenever they play a big pot, they immediately send the hand to somebody. And they immediately send them back a PIO chart for every street, because they have somebody at home who’s on staff who runs the solution for them. They don’t know what’s there, they’re going to be ahead of time, you know, they can predict it and think about it. But like, you don’t even get checkers on the river in this random spot, right? But they get feedback immediately while they’re sitting at the table. And that happens all the time. Like that’s just normal. I have somebody I text my question. Everybody does this. And that’s how you get good, immediate feedback and get good at poker. Because I get good at poker quickly, right? So, like, if you don’t want that to happen, ban phones, even though like you go to the bathroom break, you’re going to still text the hands to your friends.

Brad: Nobody cares about what I want Jonathan, nobody cares about what Brad Wilson wants as far as the, the poker, I do. I would like phones to be banned. I would like I would like that just even as in a sense of like, they’re just massive distractions. And as far as like the enjoyment of tournaments, like seven guys on their phone is like, sure,

Jonathan: I mean, there’s a lot of things in poker that are just like very bad for the recreational player. And like heads up displays are a great example of this. These are just terrible for the recreational player. But on some sites, it’s well within the rules. If it’s well within the rules, you give me a heads-up display, you give me up the option to use it, I’m going to use it instead of not use it, because I’d rather make more money than less money, right?

Brad: Of course.

Jonathan: So, I love like what party poker is doing by getting rid of heads up displays. It’s a great idea. And I’m very confident they’ve seen the win rates of the best players decrease because they make money by using heads up displays. They’re probably going to see the win rates of the good just fundamentally sound players increase. They’re going to see the win rates of like the one tabling players to recreational players increase. And I have no problem with that, like I’m always looking out for the recreational player, like reentry tournaments. I think, I’ve been saying it forever. I think reentry tournaments are a horrible idea. I think being able to reenter till the last second is a horrible idea. Because every time a good player buys in, they print some ROI. And every time a bad player injures, they lose, right. So, if the good players all get to buy and over and over and over and print ROI, that’s coming from somewhere, and it’s coming from the bad player. So, the bad players are such a substantial disadvantage. And

Brad: So you just get a number of, you get to enter a tournament many times, I mean, for the pro, this is like, obvious. It’s obvious that if you have an edge, if you have an ROI of like, whatever, we’ll call it, 20%. And you enter five times, like each time, you’re maintaining this ROI, right? Like, you’re,

Jonathan: It’s going to go down if

Brad: You have an edge. It goes down, but it’s, it’s typically not going to go negative. So, like,

Jonathan: Well, it could it could. It could be buying like last second, you may not be the right, if you buy in for like, five big blinds or whatever

Brad: Right. It’s not like it goes negative, it’s unlikely. Most of the time it doesn’t.

Jonathan: I’m not going to say is necessarily true, because like say you start with a 20% ROI.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: And then like halfway through late registration, you’re at 10% ROI. And then at the very end of late registration, you’re like 1% ROI, or 0% ROI. Maybe there’s rake of 5% tonight or minus 5%. So, you can’t just like blindly reenter. That said, Pete, some people were doubting that we’d be able to put in $12,000 and action on Sundays on this one site on your like non-big Sundays, but it’s because I’m maximum reentering everything, because I know making money up out the door, and you can max reenter on that site for forever. So, because they want to get more rate, right? The way you rake people to death is by letting them play low edge games over and over and over and over again. So, it’s a great way to rake away a ton of money. But I’m also raking, raking away. I’m also making 5% ROI on these max, late registrations and a $200 tournament. But like that’s something I would love to see gone, even though it’s good for me personally. Because again, I’m not incentivized to help out good pros, I’m paid by recreational players, mostly, to help them get better at poker, right? So, I’m always looking out for them. I don’t like re-entries. I don’t like heads up displays. I don’t like GTO charts on your phone. But if it’s allowed, and it’s within the rules, I need to provide this tool to my students so they can compete.

Brad: Yeah, I get that. It’s the market your serve, you’re serving your market, not your own personal beliefs. I will say like heads up displays, the only caution I have with banding heads up displays, theoretically, I think it’s fine. In practice, I worry about sites policing the games in an acceptable way, because of all the scandals in poker, that have been figured out by the community because they have the data, right? Like, because they have the data to look at. So, having that data I think is important for the security of the site. Like you have to trust this security of a website of a platform to like be on point, as it relates to security, in order to remove the HUDs.

Jonathan: It’s the other end, oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Brad: Well, the other option is just make HUDs available to everybody with a tutorial and teach people how to use HUDs.

Jonathan: Like have a good player are always going to do a way better than bad players.

Brad: It’s true. But like, I will say this, like you play a video game, right? You log on like Halo, you have a HUD in Halo, it gives you different data points on your screen, takes you through a walkthrough, like this is what this means. This is what this means. I learned how to exist and battle in an alternate reality on a place that doesn’t exist in a world that is imaginary, in like five minutes. So, I do believe that recreational players are smart enough to understand the HUD, right? They may not use it at the level that a pro uses it, however, I’m convinced that they can learn. And that would be the other option. To me, I think one or the other is ideal, you remove it entirely, emphasis on security, or everybody gets it and you teach people how to use it so that it lowers, reduces the skill gap.

Jonathan: So, a problem with the given to everybody concept is that the good players may not use what you provide and may just provide their own.

Brad: Right, you have to have some sort of safeguard.

Jonathan: So, either way, you’re going to need an immense amount of security to make sure that are using like, like on GG right now. They have a very, very basic HUD, very basic. But I mean, I don’t, I don’t know if anybody has a HUD do they add on top of it? I don’t, I mean, I know it’s not allowed but I don’t know if anybody’s doing it. I remember seeing someone’s stream World Series of Poker back in the day and they were using a HUD when it was illegal. But

Brad: You know! You know some people are using aa HUD.

Jonathan: You got to know people are, I mean, we saw a guy with a real time solver the other day playing video of a guy playing. So, like you know people are using these programs in various ways. So, what I have, I have pokercoaching.com/HUD, people can get the heads up display I use playing a bunch of tables and it’s not advanced and I definitely think it is easy to learn a not so advanced heads up display. And like I have a very nice win rate despite not going too deep in the HUD, like only whenever you can click on a stat there to go into positional ranges and all that stuff. Like I’m not even good at that kind of thing. But I’m good at taking 10 stats and making the most of those 10 stats as opposed to using 500 stats and how to know how to navigate and all that. So certainly, I think it’s easy enough to learn how to do exactly what I do. And I show people how to do exactly what I do. But, it’s not, because either way you got to police stuff or just let it run wild say, hey, do whatever you want, you know, you, you got to buy your own hold’em manager for 100 bucks, and you have to put up your own heads up, see exactly what you want. And

Brad: I do have a, I know that, are you associated with party poker right now?

Jonathan: No, I’m not paid by any poker site. I like party poker. I think they do good work.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: But I am not paid by any poker site to promote them in any way.

Brad: I know that

Jonathan: Students

Brad: You had a meeting with Rob Young,

Jonathan: I did.

Brad: This is what is sticking out of my head. I remember you to meeting with together. If you have a line of communication to Rob Young, I do have at least one software upgrade, that I don’t know why it doesn’t exist anywhere. And platform should absolutely use it. And that is diminishing time for making your decisions. And especially in cash games. You get on ignition, for instance, you get 30 seconds, some people on trivial decisions, or seemingly trivial decisions will take up their entire time bank. I know there’s something happening in the spots that they may be unfamiliar, they’re running some sort of, you know, they’re looking through something to, in order to come at a decision that is more educated than their natural response. Folks who regularly take all of their time bank should not get a full-time bank to make their decisions in future hands. It should reduce. So, this is my one software suggestion that like, yes, you should take your full-time bank in some spots, because they’re hard. And they merit deeper thought. However, if you’re regularly doing this, you want to lose the privilege of having a full 30 seconds, and it goes to 20. And then 10. Just overtime.

Jonathan: Punish the people who tank.

Brad: Punish the people that tank. Why not? Why doesn’t anybody do that?

Jonathan: I mean, they kind of do that in live service to some extent where you get some time bank chips now and some of the, the tournament’s where you get like three minutes of time throughout the day. And once that’s gone, it’s just done. I like that a lot. Yeah, I hear you. So, I mean, I don’t know a ton about these real time solvers. But I have to imagine they go quickly. So,

Brad: Well, there’s pre-solved, right?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Brad: The spots that they’re looking for,

Jonathan: you probably know better than me.

Brad: Well, the spots that they’re looking for pre-solved. And so, you’re effectively just running a search.

Jonathan: Okay.

Brad: And then it pulls up the results of the pre-solve for the

Jonathan: That’s what I have in my app, the same difference, right?

Brad: Exactly. Right. It’s, It’s exactly like that. But, you know, it may take time to input a line, like single raised pots, small blind verse in please.

Jonathan: Oh, here, it took me five seconds to input the, the scenario,

Brad: Right. So, like,

Jonathan: Then it searches through the database and finds that solution.

Brad: Exactly. That, that’s what I believe to be happening. And like, anything that take, that takes time, and like if somebody’s regularly taking more time than the other players, it’s likely not a good thing anyway, for the game, just the game flow period. So, like, you’re incentivized to have players act faster just as a platform and cash games, especially.

 

Jonathan: For sure. I’ll mention that to Rob. I mean, I know there’s like a I think, well, I’m not going to promote the sites. But some, some of the sites give you a very short amount of time on each decision

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: I mean, I’ve talked to Rob Young about this, some, like I’m not affiliated with him, but I like what he’s doing. And the talk you’re mentioning about his pre COVID, one of the last times before COVID happened. We’re going to work together to like make, really just give a lot of educational programs to amateur players in the live poker circuit. But the live poker circuit is kind of falling apart. So,

Brad: There is no live that’s

Jonathan: It’s been put on hold.

Brad: Yeah.

Jonathan: But I mean, I’ve talked to him recently. I mean, I told him to get rid of cash game, right? Get the low stakes, just get rid of it. And turns out he posted today that there might be some big changes coming to small six games. So that’s exciting to see. Because why you reckon these people that have no money?

Brad: Right.

Jonathan: You know, it doesn’t make, it doesn’t make sense. But, we’ve talked about a bunch of things to make online poker more like live poker, and it’s all things you can do. And, like, whenever you’re playing live poker, you get to play one table, right? And people get to look at you physically, right? They get to do all these things. And turns out live poker is pretty good. You know? It’s, it’s a good experience for everyone. It’s kind of like self-policing to some extent. You can’t just sit there and take 45 seconds every decision. I guess he can but your opponents are going to get annoyed and whatnot. And anyway, I think that he is actively trying to look out for the recreational players because he realizes that’s where, like the lifeblood of the community is to some extent. If you crush all the recreational players right off the bat, they’re going to quit. Like I’ve talked to about onboarding programs. Like you talked about Halo right, at the beginning of the game, they teach you how to use how to play the game. There’s like a horse Hearthstone game you can play on your phone just like a card game and you have to go through an hour-long tutorial before they’re even let you play against the player. And I think they should probably do that with poker. Because if you’re just awful, and you put your money online, it’s going to be an awful experience losing your $50 deposit right off the bat. Maybe they go, I was just unlucky, but $50 and again, you lose it immediately. Like, oh, this game sucks, I quit. And then you’re done, that you don’t want that to be the first poker experience people have. And there are ways to go about making the experiences for non-world class pros substantially better. And so, when I’m trying to talk to Rob about that, if any other site wants to talk to me about that, I’m happy to help. Because I want the game to thrive for forever, which is like, why am I going against reentry tournaments since the beginning, because I realize it’s really bad for the game, it’s good for the casino, it’s good for the pros. It’s bad for the recreational players. And this is a

Brad: Another common goal that we share is I want poker to be as good for as long as possible. I mean, Kevin, Kevin Rabidshow came on the show. And he talked about grooming in the gray areas. And like how he looked at his database, and he realizes, he pays, you know, 10,000 big blinds over the course of a year more than he pays small blinds, right? This is obviously a problem with griming. Like, if predatory behavior is a thing that you want to get rid of as a platform, we’ll start introducing processes in your software that make it harder for people to take advantage of it, right. Like you put people in a thing. Like if I get taken advantage of, if I know that I’m going to get grimed by somebody,

Jonathan: People may not know what you’re referring to here.

Brad: Basically, paying a small blind and then sitting out

Jonathan: In a heads up game you’re talking about.

Brad: Getting a heads up, match your opponent paste the last big blind and then you leave, right. That’s always

Jonathan: You basically never pay the last big blind.

Brad: Right. You never pay the last big blind, like, if I’m playing against a guy that I know is capable or likely to do this, fuck yes, I’m going to grim him. Like, I’m not going to

Jonathan: Well, you have to do it before he does it. That’s, that’s the, that becomes the name of the game.

Brad: Exactly. So, like why not have a process within the software that takes care of that, that takes care of predatory behavior of sitting, you know, moving to the drag left of a whale or, you know, scripting to where like a whale sits down and then all of a sudden, the table fills and there’s 100 people on the waitlist?

 

Jonathan: Could you imagine being the whale and feeling that experience? Yeah, I’m going to go play poker now. And you sit down and there’s nobody here day well, and then there’s 100-person long waiting list of six people ready to go.

Brad: You feel like a fool. Right? You feel, you have to feel stupid.

Jonathan: That’s insane. And that’s a bad experience, I think.

Brad: I think so too. Like it, but the platform has responsibility here, right? You put it, you put it on the players to blame the players, no predatory no bomb honey, no blah, blah, blah. Well, you can implement measures that make it harder to bomb hunt, that make it harder to grim, that make all of these things harder to pull off. If you were so inclined, assuming you’re making a shitload of money and can invest in research and development and that you care, right? Like, don’t tell me you care, while doing nothing, other than blaming the pros. Tell me you care, and take action to reduce these things in the environment. So,

Jonathan: I think at the end of the day, if people actually care about something, they take action, and they change it, and if they don’t, well, they don’t. Like, for example, I always wanted to learn a foreign language, I thought, but I just never did anything about it. So, I’d like it. But am I willing to actually spend the time and effort to do it? Turns out no. So instead of like thinking I want it just like, I realize it’s not a priority right now.

Brad: Yeah

Jonathan:  And that’s not to be your priority right now. It’s okay. And so, but if it’s not your priority, then find a priority, make that priority happen, and then continue moving forward. I mean, this happens in business all the time, like building this app. It’s been a big problem, big program, I mean, cost me hundreds of 1000s of dollars to build this silly app. And it’s been a lot of work. But it’s a priority, because I want to have the best app in the App Store. And it’s been a lot of effort. And I don’t just say I want to have the best app, I have to invest money and make the best app. Right?

Jonathan: You, you mentioned something that will in this conversation, we’ll tie it together. You mentioned something earlier about transparency. And I think that transparency is so important for these platforms, especially because to see how much money they’re making to see the damage that like bomb hunting actually causes to to see the revenue that a platform is making off carnival games. This to me is important. And again, don’t tell me Don’t tell me the pros are going to ruin poker for everybody by bum hunting while simultaneously offering fucking carnival games because that is bullshit. Well,

Brad: I mean, look,

Jonathan: I’m not so sure I agree with this. I think poker rooms should be allowed to run a casino if they feel inclined. Sure. Don’t call me predatory, though. Right. Okay, that’s fair. Don’t call me predatory Don’t. Don’t Don’t chastise me for my behavior while you’re doing something way worse on the other end. I know poker makes a small portion of all of these companies income sure I know a lot of it comes from sports betting and casino games. It’s way more lucrative to run the casino and the sports book so like I just just tell it to me straight right say Look, you’re taking money from my guys. I don’t like Because I want them to lose in the sports book, I can actually respect that. Don’t tell me I’m doing something wrong. And I’m being predatory. Because you want to take the money in the sports book. It’s like, be fair, you are being predatory. But so are they? Well, everybody is everybody has it’s a meritocracy. Right? Like instantly enough. Professionals essentially trade their time for money, right? But then, but then the recreational players, they want to trade their money for a good time. And you need that to go both ways. If the recreational players have a bad time, unless they’re just addicted to gambling, they’re gonna quit. And you need to make sure that having a good time and losing all the time is is not a good time. Now, it’s not very fun. Not very fun, lose. But yes, I do agree that I think transparency is important than being open and honest with people is important. And no site currently, does it. I don’t think Besides, the public ones must do it. They have to write like, because they’re publicly traded on some stock and star says, I must release information on profits. And if some sort of financial statements I mean, maybe you can look at those and extrapolate. It’s just don’t feel like it’s so silly to me to villainize people like what is ACR gained by villainizing you they gain less exposure, they gain less people seeing their brand on Twitch like there’s there’s not much to gain. And like photo poker was one of the biggest sites and their tagline play with the pros, it was a highlight, right? You can utilize the pros in a positive way. You know, you want to lower the skill gap, party poker, make a training site, hire the pros who are crushing your games, pay them money to create educational material that helps people like there. There are other more creative ways than just demonizing certain folks that I think could and should be utilized. But I’m Uh, I’m just Brad Wilson, who runs a hashtag pokergo tournament and hosted Jason poker greatness podcast.

Jonathan: I want to start an illegal poker site. Oh, God, no. Okay. I mean, we can do something about it. Yeah, we can. I don’t want to go to prison. That’s Yeah,

Brad: I mean, either. Maybe, maybe next month. We’ll try them. Yeah, we’ll try it then. Jonathan. It’s been great talking to you. Great. Catching up. I want to do it again, in the near future, with minimal controversy, minimal, minimal of these things. We can talk about the positives that are going on in the poker world. I hope we had some positives we do. That’s life. Some positive, some negative. We’ll make it better next time. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. My pleasure.