– General Introduction –
Jonathan Little is an American professional poker player. He was born on December 22nd, 1984 in Pensacola, Florida.
He got his start as an online player, mainly playing S&G’s on PokerStars under the screen name “Jcardshark” and on Full Tilt under the screen name “FieryJustice”. He then transitioned to the live tournament scene where he saw even greater success. As of now, he has over $7.050 million in lifetime earnings and won two WPT titles.
Little makes strategy videos for the biggest poker site on the web, pokernews.com – that is where most people know him from. He also has his own poker coaching site.
– Key Career Dates –
- 2003: He starts playing online poker for small stakes.
- 2007: He wins his first World Poker Tour title.
- 2008: He wins his second World Poker Tour title.
- 2011: He gets his biggest single online MTT cash to date. He finishes second in a $1K Monday event on Full Tilt for $317,328.
- 2014: He starts creating his Weekly Poker Hand video series on his YouTube channel.
– Jonathan Little’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Little’s first card game wasn’t poker – it was Magic the Gathering. “Magic” is a strategic trading card game produced by Hasbro. Little was an avid player of this game in his high school years. At a Magic tournament, one of the players suggested they play a poker tournament for Magic cards as a prize to change things up a little. That is where Little got introduced to his new favorite card game, poker.
At the age of 18, he wanted to deposit $50 on a poker site from his father’s credit card but he didn’t let him. Eventually, Little got his own credit card to put up his first $50. He was playing Sit&Go’s and that $50 quickly grew into $35,000.
Little was studying engineering at the University of West Florida but he dropped out to pursue making a living through poker.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Little’s Hendon page shows $7.059 million in live tournament cashes. It was accumulated over the course of 13 years and 149 individual cashes.
His first recorded ITM finish on the site is from 2006. He finished 22nd in a $500 WSOP Circuit event and won $3,210.
That same year, many cashes followed soon. However, in his “pokerography” video for Poker Central Little states that his transition from the virtual felt to the “real” one wasn’t that smooth after all.
“The first year I of live poker that I played I did really, really bad. I beat my head against the wall for about 6 to 8 months” – said Little.
But things worked out for him eventually. He has won two World Poker Tour titles. One in the 2008-2009 season – he beat a field of 412 players in the $10K NLHE championship in the Foxwood Resorts Casino. He pocketed $1.12 million for that victory, his biggest single live tournament cash to date.
In the 2007-2008 WPT season he won another $10K event. This one was held in the Mirage in Las Vegas and he won $1.066 million.
In 2017, he finished second in the $10K High Roller at the partypoker Caribbean Poker Party in Punta Cana for $175,000. At the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, he came in 5th in the $8,000 NLHE event and won $317,873. Also in 2007, he finished 2nd in a CA$10K NLHE event at the North American Poker Championships for $738,821.
→ World Series of Poker ←
Little has no WSOP golden bracelets yet. He has 40 cashes at the World Series for a total of $741,100.
The biggest one is $238,833 for a 3rd place finish in the $5,000 NLHE 6-handed tournament from 2013.
However, there’s another WSOP cash that may be closer to his heart despite paying less. In 2016, he formed a 3-player team with his parents, Larry and Rita Little, in the $1,000 Tag Team Hold’em tournament. The family line-up ended up making the final table, taking 9th place for $3,575.
Little also has an ITM finish in the Main Event, form 2014. He came in 490th out of 6,683 players and won $22,678.
→ Live Cash Games ←
Little often talks about the time he was playing cash games full-time at the Bellagio in Vegas. However, live cash game results at casinos are not recorded so there’s no statistics available to share about those games.
In November 2017, he appeared on a stream for Poker Night in America, playing $25/$50 No Limit Hold’em cash game at the Choctaw Casino in Durant, OK. Jennifer Tilly, Alec Torelli and Kelly Winterhalter were also at the table. That episode of PNIA hasn’t aired yet on CBS Sports.
→ Online Poker ←
As we mentioned above, Little started off as an online S&G player who ran $50 up to $35,000 in a couple of months. He was playing on the account “Jcardshark” on Stars, as well as “KagM7F7” and the banned “FieryJustice” on Full Tilt. He befriended Shannon “Bluff4Rent” Shorr online who he often discussed strategy with to improve their games together.
Little started playing online MTT’s around 2006. His first cash, according to PocketFives, is from a $500 PLO event in September 2006 in which he won $3,165.
Overall, he cashed for a total of $628,346 on PokerStars and $444,501 on Full Tilt.
His biggest single online tournament payday is from 2011, when he came in 2nd in a $1K Monday event on Full Tilt and earned $317,328.
In 2008, he made it to to the final table in a $10,300 WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) NLHE event. At that final table, he played against none other than 2003 WSOP Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker. Little ended up taking 7th place for $107,535.
→ Sponsorships ←
Jonathan Little creates poker strategy videos for pokernews.com. They are called Weekly Poker Hands. In them, Little gives expert analysis of a hand himself or someone else played. The first episode was uploaded on July 30th, 2014.
With these videos, Little built up a moderate size of following on YouTube. He’s currently at 25,000 subscribers. This resulted in him being in the final 4 in the People’s Choice category at the 2018 American Poker Awards – this was basically a popularity contest based on audience votes. The other 3 finalists were Daniel Negreanu, Doug Polk and the eventual winner, Andrew Neeme.
Little also owns and runs pokercoaching.com.
→ Scandals ←
His account sharing scandal on Full Tilt
In March 2008, Little was dropped from Full Tilt’s sponsored pros. The poker site announced in a statement that they are no longer affiliated with him because he violated their terms of service by letting other players play from his account. His account “FieryJustice” was closed.
Little admitted to the account sharing and apologized in a blog post. With this, he lost a sponsorship deal that allegedly included 100% rakeback and a $35/hour salary to play on the site.
Getting banned on ACR
In September 2020, Winning Poker Network CEO Phil Nagy announced on Twitter that he decided to ban Little from his flagship site, Americas Cardroom.
He decided to do so because of the disparaging comments Little made about the site while streaming high stakes cash games from there. The decision divided the online poker community.
– Jonathan Little on Social Media –
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fieryjustice/ 17,000 fans Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonathanlittle 27,000 followers Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jcardshark/ 14,000 followers Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOWqXBOz_hoBtaqwWN_kaQQ 25,000 subscribers
Latest poker news about little
