Jonathan Little landed at WSOP Paradise, and his hotel room looked exactly as expected after a flight—suitcase on the bed, belongings scattered, but he wasn’t concerned with the view or the resort. He launched Peak GTO and began the vlog with a sentence that set the tone for the entire trip: “This trip isn’t a vacation. It's war.” He opened a spot that had been troubling him all year—50 BB deep, CO open, BTN call—and admitted he played too passively in these situations. The solver demanded more aggression, more c-bets, more challenging lines that he wouldn’t take in a live game. “If I want to compete in $100k fields, I have to do what's correct, not what's comfortable,” he tells the camera.
The most human moment of the vlog arrives when he’s convinced about the right bet on the turn. He clicks 10.3 BB, the solver shows 6.2 BB is correct, and his rating drops by -50 ELO. Jonathan smiles, but with a touch of bitterness: “And this is why you study. Your gut tells you one thing, the solver another.” According to him, these micro-details are the difference between a good player and one who can survive in high buy-ins.
He also openly admits to a leak he's focusing on the most—his natural urge to check. The solver wants to bet. And he knows it’s his flaw. “I need to stop playing comfortable poker,” he says, showing spots where most players would simply give up aggression. In his case, you see a real effort to change his own autopilot—a move players his age often avoid.
At the end of his preparation, he doesn’t do anything fancy. He packs black shirts, vitamins, vlog gear, a WSOP bracelet, and a Jacob & Co watch. “I’ll bring them in case I need something for the ceremony,” he notes. He then offers the last words of the day: “This is a 14-day series. If you arrive tired, you've lost before you even started.” And he goes to sleep.
A Painful First Day
Rested, he finally heads to the casino, where two players stop him at registration to thank him for everything they’ve learned from his videos. After two hours of play, he only has one sentence to share in the video:
“So far, zero playable hands and zero exciting spots.” And to add to the challenge, familiar faces you don’t want to see when running poorly showed up at the table—Chino Rheem, Shannon Shorr, and several other “killers.”
Jonathan received minimal spots during the levels and gradually dropped to 15bb short. Even after a successful double-up with KQ against J-T, he soon faced a preflop showdown A-Q vs J-J for 20 blinds, which he lost. “Standard,” he says and heads for a re-entry. His second attempt ended even quicker with A-T suited < Q-J suited for 17 blinds. “0:2,” he states, grabs his camera, and heads to his room.
Here, the vlog takes on a completely different tone. Jonathan unemotionally states that today wasn't about mistakes, but simply that the cards didn’t come. He then shows why thousands follow him—he sits down at his laptop, opens Peak GTO, and analyzes a hand that troubled him all day—A9 on a board of 8-3-2-A-A.
He explains why he checked the flop against a loose-aggressive player, why he made a large bet on the turn, why this is off GTO but correct from an exploitative standpoint, and how he thought about river sizing. In the end, the solver praises him: his river bet was precise GTO sizing.
“That pleased me,” he says. It’s the only moment of the day that turned out as he planned. And as the vlog concludes, Jonathan says a sentence that sums up the entire day and trip: “I played well. The cards didn’t cooperate. That’s poker.” Tomorrow, another day awaits, and according to him, it can only get better.
Sources - YouTube/PokerCoaching, Instagram
