Poker Faces in the Crowd: Bruce Little

Bruce Little has always loved action. He enlisted in the military during Vietnam, survived a grueling training process, and joined the U.S. Army Special Forces. Each covert mission offered a new adventure, an exotic risk somewhere around the globe. Eventually he left the army, returned home to Louisiana, and spent three decades as a member of the New Orleans Police Department. These days Little prefers poker to police work. In 1999, he cashed in the first-ever tournament at Harrah’s New Orleans (“the line to sign up was outside and down the block,” he recalls) and has accumulated over $65,162 in tournament cashes — including a first-place finish at the 2010 Winter Bayou Poker Challenge.

I met Bruce a few years ago at Harrah’s New Orleans, where he’s known for being friendly, fast-talking, and fond of telling bad beat stories. Heading into the New Year, he’s targeting Las Vegas. We recently discussed Bruce’s prestigious military career, approaches to crime fighting, and next summer’s WSOP Main Event.

Bruce Little: A week out of highschool, I had already joined the military. I was trying to get into Vietnam before it ended.

Ben Saxton: So you wanted to get in there.

I didn’t want the war to end without me. I enlisted directly for Special Forces. At the time the attrition rate was about 85%, so they allowed you to join the program as long as you passed the preliminary tests — Basic Training, Advanced Training, Parachute School, pre-Special Forces Training. For Special Forces Training, we started with a class of 440. We graduated sixteen.

Why did so many people drop out?

Well, the answer connects to poker. It wasn’t who was the strongest or in the best shape: it was absolutely mental. You had to go in there with the mindset: I’ll die before I quit. That’s the mindset they were looking for.

They were trying to break people down.

They bring you to a point where you can’t go any more, and they go thirty or forty percent past that. I watched twenty people drop off the first night.

What were the exercises, or the tests?

Special Forces is unique. It’s much different from training for SEAL Team, which is almost 100% physical — and that fits, because their missions are direct-action missions: they go in, do a mission, and go out. It’s a one-day op, maybe. Special Forces, on the other hand, operates in a twelve-man A-team. Each member is an expert in what he does, and he’s cross-trained in a secondary area, whether that’s Demolitions, Communications, Medical, Light Weapons, Heavy Weapons, Intelligence. Your job is to train, equip, and lead indigenous people in interdiction missions against the enemy, so you’re basically creating an army. You live with those indigenous people for six months or a year behind enemy lines. You have to be able to parachute in, to mountain-climb in, to snow-ski in, to scuba in, you have to know the language and customs. So it’s much, much more of a mental struggle than the physical struggle of SEAL Team.

I was assigned to a Special Forces A-team — nothing like that “Mr. T.” show — and we were in a different country every month.

Where?

Another unique thing about Special Forces is that you’re assigned where there is no war, per se. You’ll be in Africa, or the Middle East, or in Central America chasing drug dealers with the DEA — there’s always a covert mission. When there was still a wall in East Germany, we went into denied areas behind the Iron Curtain. The model of Special Forces is the quiet professional. We don’t write books or make movies. The missions rarely come to light.

In the late seventies, before Delta Force existed, I was assigned to the first anti-terrorist team in the U.S. At the time there were a lot of hijackings going on. Colonel Charles Beckwith, who incidentally presented the sixteen of us with our berets at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, stated that he could assemble an anti-terrorism unit — Delta Force — in two years. The colonel in charge of his Special Forces group said that he could assemble one in six months, which he did, and I joined that unit. Once they stood up Delta Force, we were disbanded. I decided to leave the military — it was a mistake — and went into law enforcement.

Why do you think it was a mistake to leave?

I think that it was my calling. I think that’s where I belonged for the rest of my life. I learned so much, and I’ll tell you a quick story that relates to poker. My mentor was a man called Georg Muscaluk. He was my Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant. He had fought for the Polish Army at twelve in WWII, he was captured by the Germans and forced to fight for them, and then he escaped and fought with the French Underground at fifteen. He’s the most remarkable man I’ve ever met. We would sit at a European café and he would show me, based on people’s mannerisms — how they drank coffee, how they ordered, how they walked and talked, how their buttons were sewn on their clothing — how to determine what country they were from. To this day, I can hear someone’s conversation and usually tell what country, even what region, they’re from. He taught me to watch people, which helped when I segued into Intelligence. And it certainly helps me in my poker game.

Did you know you wanted to go into law enforcement after you left Special Forces?

I did. I was obviously a Type A personality, and I needed the adrenaline rush, so I joined the NOPD to pay the bills, basically. After I graduated from Tulane in the early eighties, I was assigned to undercover work, in Vice, because of my military background. I spent most of my thirty-three-year career in Narcotics. I think I’m the only NOPD police officer who’s served with the FBI, the DEA, ATF, Customs, and the state police — I’ve served on five different task forces. I retired as the Commander of Narcotics in 2005.

What was your experience like with the NOPD? You must have seen so much.

Well, with the consent decrees and the restrictions placed on police officers nationwide, crime has risen exponentially. You need to have a stop-and-frisk program. You have to allow police officers to be proactive, not reactive. If you’re responding to a burglary or a shooting or a carjacking, then that means you’ve failed — because the crime has already occurred. Unfortunately, in this day and age, the public doesn’t want you to be that way. They want a hands-off approach, but then you get what you pay for.

What are some other examples of being proactive?

The term “profiling” has been bandied around a lot. If you’re in the Lower Ninth Ward, which is traditionally an African-American community, and you see white males aimlessly walking around, it’s quite obvious that they’re there to buy drugs. That’s not profiling; that’s called common sense and good police work. It’s also important to use actionable intelligence: if you look at reports that three white males are committing burglaries in a red pickup truck, and you stop red pickup trucks, you’re not profiling. You’re using actionable intelligence to prevent crime. Unfortunately I don’t think the public understands that, and we probably do a poor job of translating that into something that the public can, in fact, understand.

Do you think there’s something unique about crime fighting in New Orleans?

We truly are a melting pot. In other cities, you tend to have low-income areas where crime is primarily situated. But here, in New Orleans, you’ve got low-income areas two blocks from million-dollar homes on Saint Charles Avenue. Because you have an intermixing of low- and high-income areas, you create a target-rich environment that criminals have access to. They can flee on a bicycle and be home counting their money before you get the call.

Most of my experience with the police department has been in interviews and interrogations. Based on my training and my experience, I can tell if someone’s gonna lie before they speak a word. That transitions very, very well into my poker game. I’ve been told by the staff here at Harrah’s that I have the best reads in the room. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna win.

It doesn’t. You’ve gotta survive the bad beats.

But it gives me a distinct advantage watching the mannerisms, watching the breathing, the hand movements, the eye movements. I’ve been doing that for thirty-three years with the police department, and it serves me well.

Looking back over your poker career — you’ve been playing for a long time — what stands out?

I have seventeen cashes and a [WSOP] ring from a six-handed event. I guess that would be the highlight. I’ve never played the Main Event in Vegas, but I recently won a seat from a satellite tournament.

Oh, I remember. I was in that tournament, and you busted me!

[Laughs]. I did.

Are you feeling good about your game and the upcoming Main Event?

I really am. I feel really, really good about my chances. You know, I’ve transitioned: I used to be super-aggressive. But if you’re one-dimensional, you won’t have longevity. My game has evolved into timed aggression. I think the key to success in poker is to be adaptive and transitional. The two most important things in my game are position and playing the table. Or playing the player.

What does that mean, for you?

If you have a very aggressive player, or a series of aggressive players, you have to play more tightly: wait for that big hand, and then trap. Because you know that an aggressive, one-dimensional player is going to continuation-bet no matter what. If you’re playing with passive players, then you can use your position to bet. As we say in the military: adapt and overcome.

*Originally published in the January 2019 issue of Two Plus Two Magazine