Optimal Pro: Jonathan Little

I got to ask eminent pro Jonathan Little a few questions. I have always admired his discipline and teaching style.

Tell us about yourself!

JL: I am a professional poker player with over $7,000,000 in live tournament earnings, author of 15 best-selling educational poker books, and I own the educational membership training site PokerCoaching.com.

There are many courses and resources out there today to learn poker. I think a lot of players get fazed with the noise of everything that is going on. What is your LPA on navigating these resources as a beginner?

JL: I get the “Where do I start?” question a lot, so I made a short free course, Mastering the Fundamentals course, available at PokerCoaching.com/fundamentals. This gets beginners up to speed so they can make full use of all the resources available at PokerCoaching.com (which offers a free trial membership).


How do you manage your poker study schedule?

JL: When I am home, I work whenever my wife is working, which is usually Monday – Friday from 9am – 6pm. This gives me a solid 45 hours each week to work on studying poker, coaching students, and creating content. On Sundays, I put in a full 16-hour long online poker session where I play roughly 16 tables at the same time. This allows me to get in a ton of volume despite not playing too many hours. When I am traveling the live tournament circuit, I do not deal with the business side of my career at all and instead play poker for about 14 hours of poker each day, again helping me get in volume.


What's your favorite poker resource?

JL: PokerCoaching.com. I know that may sound like the easy answer, but I made the site to be the training site I wish I had when I was learning poker, and also to be the site I currently need to continue improving my skills. I recently hired a few of the absolute best players in the world (one pro was recently the #1 online player and another was a top 10 live player last year) to help take my skills to the next level.


What's your favorite non-poker book?

JL: I have a lot of books that I enjoy on all sorts of topics, but I think the book that would help poker players the most is The Obstacle is the Way, which helps develop a stoic mindset.


How can people find you?

JL:
twitter.com/jonathanlittle

Youtube.com/pokercoaching

Instagram.com/jcardshark