Winning Big: Jonathan Little Talks WPT Foxwoods

By Martin Derbyshire Nov 14, 2008 | 2 months ago

Jonathan Little wins the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals

It took until just before 4 a.m. EST to get it down, breaking both the final-table and heads-up hand records on the World Poker Tour, but WPT Season 6 Player of the Year Jonathan Little started a run at the Season 7 crown with a win at the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals.

As late as it was, Little is a courteous poker champion, and agreed to give PL.com some insight into this present win, his past triumphs and where he's headed in the future.

So Jonathan, a win at Mirage last year, two other final tables and the WPT Player of the Year honors: is this becoming old hat to you, or are you as excited about this win as any other?

I'm very, very excited about this one and I'm not really sure why. I wasn't really excited about the Mirage one, for some reason. I mean I was excited, but this one confirms that I can actually do it again and it's not just a huge luckfest.

Well, it was kind of a luckfest today, but it really just confirms my confidence in my abilities.

This was obviously a very long heads-up match, breaking the previous WPT record, but taking you back to the rest of this very tough final table, was there a key hand you felt propelled you to heads-up?

Portrait of a champion.

Definitely the hand where I had queens. Jack (Schanbacher) pushed for like 10 big blinds, David Pham called and I picked up queens and I went all-in.

David Pham was getting really good odds to call. But it was probably a good fold. He had tens. He claimed he had tens at least. He either had ace-king or a big pair. If he had ace-king then it was a bad fold.

But anyway, that was really a huge hand, because up until that point I'd had very little cards and that got me some chips.

And then of course there's the epic heads-up match we just witnessed. Tell us what you think of Jonathan Jaffe's play?

He plays great. That was the toughest heads-up match I'd ever played.

Running out of wrist space.

Being that it all went so long, surpassing the previous record for the most hands at a final table set when Scott Clements and you got heads-up for the WPT Niagara title last season, did you start having flashbacks?

The heads-up match with Scott Clements was actually a lot different because it was the actual [final table] that lasted a long time and we were fairly deep-stacked when the blinds got high and he beat me so quick heads-up I didn't really think about it.

But yeah, you know in heads-up you're either going to be on the good side or the bad side. In that last hand I could have easily had ace-ten and he had ace-queen ... you just got to hope you are on the right side of it.

It seems the key hand was when you got it in behind with K-5o but found a way to suck out. Can you tell us your thoughts behind shoving with that hand?

Another day, another big stack for Little.

He hadn't been raising a whole lot of hands, but then he decided to raise a few hands in a row and I just assumed he was switching gears or whatever, so I just decided to put a stop to his raising every hand. That was really the point of that, but I told God I would thank him if I hit the spade on the river, so thank you God.

Well Jonathan we know you're tired after another big win so we'll let you go, but where are you headed next?

I'm going to go home and work online for about a month, actually it's like two weeks now - I didn't expect to be here this long. Then I'm going to Bellagio for the month of their [Five Diamond] tournaments.

* * * * * * * * * * *

With a second WPT title now under his belt, Jonathan Little cements his status as one of the best young players in the game. And should he stay on pace for the rest of this WPT season, back-to-back WPT Player of the Year honors are not out of the question. Jonathan Little is that big!