Behind the Scenes: Jonathan Little Coaching David Einhorn During Big One for One Drop
With the attention and cameras focused on the 27 players competing in the $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop – the last tournament of the 2018 World Series of Poker – what fans don’t see much of are the railbirds.
One of them is professional poker player and noted author Jonathan Little, who is perched on the rail with an iPad tuned into PokerGo and a phone at the ready to refresh PokerNews’ live updates. Little isn’t watching as a fan though. Instead, a player, hedge fund manager and philanthropist David Einhorn, has solicited his services as a poker coach.
“We’ve played a bunch of charity poker tournaments together in New York City and he sent me an email out of the blue maybe three months ago asking if I’d be interested in coaching him for this tournament he’s playing for charity,” Little said when asked how the coaching opportunity came about.
Little: “He definitely had some holes in his game and we worked hard to fix them."
The 49-year-old Einhorn, who is the founder and president of Greenlight Capital, has long been a recreational poker player keen on playing big buy-in events. However, what really stands out is his generosity, which includes donating his winnings to charity. That includes the $4,352,000 he won for finishing third in the inaugural Big One for One Drop back in 2012.
“On Day 1, he lost about a third of his chips with two pair. He ended up having to fold it to Talal Shakerchi, which was unfortunate, but I thought he played great,” Little said when asked of Einhorn’s performance thus far. “There was one spot where he might have been able to bluff but did not. But the goal was to play well and not risk his whole stack unless you have a really good situation. He did exactly as I told him to do and he ended up going from 5 million to 6 million despite being incredibly card dead. It was a pretty good day.”
He continued: “He definitely had some holes in his game and we worked hard to fix them. We’re just trying to get him to play GTO like the German kids. If he can play like the German kids he’ll be fine.”
Speaking of, one of those German kids was Rainer Kempe, who late registered at the start of Day 2. His $1,000,000 buy-in only bought him 20 minutes in the tournament. That is when Einhorn five-bet jammed holding pocket aces and Kempe called off with queens. An ace on the turn locked it up for Einhorn, who took over the chip lead with 13.9 million, while Rainer hit the rail.
I never really had an issue with playing/potentially losing money people had invested in me. They know the risk an… https://t.co/RSRFDkMW5i
— Rainer Kempe (@GatsbyKempinho)
“It was very exciting. He realizes it was a set-up scenario,” Little said of the hand. “He tries to keep a very even keel to where he doesn’t get too excited when things go great and devasted when things go wrong. That’s what you have to do whenever you play a poker tournament or are dealing with money in any way. If you care about the wins you’ll get too excited and if you care about the loses you’re going to be devastated and maybe make a mistake. He realizes it was a spot where neither play did anything wrong and he was on the right side of it.”
Little will be railing Einhorn throughout the tournament, but when all is said and done, he’s headed back home to New York after a lackluster summer.
“My summer was not too great,” he admitted. “I had one cash in the smallest tournament I played, but that’s okay. I only played about 10 tournaments this year because I had a son 18 months ago and I knew I needed to stay home for a lot of the WSOP. There’s a lot of short-term variance.”
In the long term, Little revealed that fans can look forward to some upcoming books, including follow-ups to two of his most successful ones.
“I’m definitely going to be remaking my very first tournament series, Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, we’re going to go back and completely revamp and update those,” he said. “Maybe there’s an Excelling at Online No-Limit Hold’em coming in the future with a bunch of great authors.”
You can follow PokerNews coverage of the 2018 WSOP $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop here.
