Jonathan Little Has Had a Life-Changing Summer
Results from a heart scan that Jonathan Little had been putting off for six months came just weeks before he won his first WSOP bracelet.
Poker players are used to having summers full of ups and downs. In his 19 years playing the World Series of Poker, Jonathan Little has had plenty of those WSOPs, but two big events this summer gave him a new perspective and a long-awaited career milestone.
The first big event came when he got the results back from a coronary calcium scan. His doctor informed him that he had plaque buildup around his heart and it may be a sign of some serious problems to come if he didn’t make some changes.
“I did some blood tests and a body scan as I was recommended to do and it said I have a slightly closed-up heart,” Little said. “If I eat a little healthier, stop drinking so much, get on a better sleep schedule, take statins, take various supplements, hopefully, I'll be okay. I will be okay. I'll probably be okay.”
The second big event came when he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet and removed his name from the best tournament players without a bracelet list.
“I didn't even know I was going to play the tournament, but I hopped in the tournament, and next thing you know, seven hours later, I won. So that was good,” Little said matter-of-factly.
One of Little’s friends, Brad Gerstner, had suggested Little, who recently turned 40, should get the scan done. Little felt fine and kept deprioritizing it until one day he felt a little lightheaded and decided to book the exam. The procedure was quick and Little didn’t think about it much until his doctor called with the news.
Since then he’s done a lot of thinking about his heart health and has been paying more attention to little things that he otherwise wouldn’t have given a second thought to before the diagnosis.
“Funny enough, I think after I got the news I've been much more concerned about my heart than before,” Little said, admitting it can also be a little stressful. “Like, the other day, I was in the shower, my heart was beating a little fast. I don't know why. And I'm like, ‘Oh, am I about to have a heart attack or something?’, but I'm probably just fine.”
The scare also gave Little a moment of introspection and got him thinking about the things in his life that matter and what’s going to be important to him moving forward. He shared a thread on X that included 13 “truths” that hit him as he contemplated his own mortality.
The instructions from his doctor were clear and easy to implement thanks largely to the way Little was already living his life. A gym regular with a diet mostly consisting of fish, chicken, and steak, Little reduced the amount of red meat he eats and has started restricting his alcohol intake.
“You need to make better choices. I got on this meal preparation program that delivers healthy meals every day. So now I just have a bunch of healthy meals in the refrigerator that I will inevitably eat instead of either eating nothing or eating junk,” Little said. “So you start to do things that hopefully skew healthier and I think as long as it's at the top of your mind that you need to be healthier in general, that's better off than not.”
The bracelet Little won came in WSOP Online Event # 8 ($1,000 NLHE Freezeout) where he topped 533 other players to walk away with $90,663. It wasn’t the final table or even the moment he won that got Little’s heart pumping the most though. It was the immediate aftermath.
“In theory, it’s about as least exciting as winning a bracelet could be because it was 4 am and I had to fly out at 5 .. and I was thinking, ‘I hope I don't miss my flight’,” Little said, who dashed to the airport in time to board.
Once he got back to Las Vegas, Little had his bracelet ceremony inside the Paris ballroom and while he had a crowd there to show him love, some of his friends only found out he won it when they announced his name.
“It just so happened that some of my friends were in town, so there was a good crowd there,” Little said. “(WSOP) haven't really done a good job of promoting the online bracelet winners this summer, so multiple friends were in the room who didn't even know I got a bracelet.”
With a pair of World Poker Tour Titles and nearly $9.4 million in lifetime tournament earnings, Little was happy to win the bracelet and add it to his collection of trophies from his career.
“I don't think it's listed anywhere online that I won the tournament for like Hendon Mob or anything like that, and maybe it won't count. Who knows? It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, I've won a bunch of poker tournaments,” Little said. “I have seven other bracelets, not from the World Series of Poker, but seven other literal bracelets I've been given for winning poker tournaments. So, it's just one more, you know? I'll take it, though.”