Stephen Chidwick: The Player’s Choice Of Champion

In the previous issue of Card Player Magazine, we conducted a survey of poker’s best players, asking them who they thought was the best in the world. The results came back decisively clear, with Stephen Chidwick earning 24 of the 76 total votes placed. Of his nearest competitors, the likes of which included David Peters, Justin Bonomo, Isaac Haxton, Bryn Kenney, Jake Schindler, Timofey Kuznetsov, and Ben Sulsky, nobody else earned more than seven votes.

But despite his landslide victory, of those who had the honor of being named ‘best’ by their peers, Chidwick might be one of the more surprising names to the casual poker fan. After all, he’s never won the Player of the Year award (although he has come close), and he doesn’t have one of those shiny World Series of Poker bracelets that many poker pundits use to judge success (although he has come close). In fact, he has an astounding 58 career six- and seven-figure scores, 22 live tournament titles, and countless online victories, but if you look at his top cashes (page 33), there’s only one win among his best 10 results.

What Chidwick does have, however, is a remarkable amount of consistency. Since the British poker pro has committed himself to the high roller circuit, he has been one of the premier performers, increasing his career lifetime live earnings to more than $23 million, to go along with another $5 million or so won online. He has gradually gotten better every year, finishing 48th in the Card Player POY race in 2015, 36th in 2016, seventh in 2017, and runner-up in 2018. He’s already in contention yet again this year, despite the extended break he took from the circuit following the birth of his first child.

Chidwick is just 30 years old, but is undoubtedly among the most experienced poker players in history with millions of poker hands under his belt. The Deal, England-native began playing at just age 15, and had already won more than 100 WSOP main event $10,000 seats online before he could even legally play in the Las Vegas tournament.

Card Player caught up with Chidwick shortly before the start of another summer of big tournaments to learn his story and find out what makes him so successful.

Julio Rodriguez: Can you describe your childhood? What is your family like? What interests did you have growing up?

Stephen Chidwick: I grew up in a small fishing and farming town on the south east coast of England with one sister. All of our grandparents lived within 15 minutes of us and we have a close family. I was very competitive from an early age and always loved games and sports, and I was always very obsessive about whatever I was into. I think my teachers would have described me as a capable, but unmotivated student, and I didn’t much enjoy school. I was most passionate about golf from the ages of 13-16 or so when I started playing poker.

JR: Can you talk about your introduction to poker? Did you win right away or discover you had a knack for it early on?

SC: I have played various board games, card games, and video games with my family and friends from a young age, and I first came across poker on the internet. It was around 2004 or so, and there was a lot of promotional money flowing into the game. Creating accounts on a bunch of different sites with fake birthdates, (I was 15 at the time) I started playing freerolls and used my cashes to play micro-stakes cash games and sit-n-go’s. I read all the strategy articles I could and bought a couple of books. After building up a small roll I got my dad to set me up a Neteller account and would move money around from site to site to take advantage of deposit bonuses. My preferred form of poker became tournaments. First sit-n-go’s, and once my bankroll outgrew those, I switched to MTTs (multi-table tournaments). It was a lot easier to spin up a roll in those days.

JR: Before poker, did you have any idea of what you wanted to do as a career? At what point did you start to think that poker could be your full-time job? When did you turn pro, and what did your family and friends think of your decision? 

SC: Growing up I always dreamed of being a professional [insert favorite hobby at that time]. In the period leading up to taking poker seriously, I was pretty obsessed with golf. Had I not done well in poker, I probably would have tried to be a pro golfer or do something golf related.

When I was 17, I had a couple of big tournament scores online and by the time I turned 18 and was taking my end of high school exams, I had built up a bankroll of around $80,000. I had a big sweat when I tried to withdraw a bunch of money on my 18th birthday and was asked to provide ID (which obviously didn’t match the date of birth in my account) but luckily, I was allowed to keep the money, and that was the start of my professional poker career.

My family has always been very supportive, I think because they saw how much effort I was putting in and they saw the results. I’m sure it wasn’t a path they expected me to take but I’m very grateful they allowed me to make my own decisions and pursue what made me happy.

JR: Can you talk a bit about those early years as a poker pro? Do you have any favorite early memories on the tournament circuit?

SC: I started playing live tournaments pretty soon after turning 18 and immediately fell in love with traveling and broadening my horizons. Back then the tournament stops didn’t have packed schedules with something to play every day. It was mostly the just main event and a couple of side events with bad structures, so there was a lot more time for socializing and sightseeing (or playing online poker with a couple of dozen people in the hotel lobby). I met so many amazing people from all over the world, many of whom continue to be close friends over a decade later. I couldn’t get enough of the adventure of being on the tournament circuit. Looking back, it feels like the wins and losses all blend together and I just remember having so much fun playing poker and having all these new experiences.

JR: It seems like you started to mix in more high roller events into your schedule around 2013-2014 and had a little success. What do you remember about your initial jumps into those fields? Was the play noticeably different, or was there just more pressure because of the increased buy-in?

SC: For the most part, at least at that time, the same people playing the high rollers were also playing all the main events and smaller side events, so I wouldn’t say the play was noticeably different. There were just fewer weak professionals, and fewer recreational players. Around that time, I was playing a lot of high stakes sit-n-go’s online, which on average, had fewer recs than the live high rollers and many top regs, so I was fairly comfortable playing in tough lineups. There was a bit more pressure because I was selling action and I wanted to make money for my investors (who were mostly good friends) but thankfully they had a lot of faith in me and weren’t deterred by the bad stretches which made things easier.

JR: Can you talk about the evolution in your game? I know you have championed the GTO (game theory optimal) approach and solvers to be as balanced as possible. Is there any room for exploitative play in the high rollers?

SC: Of course, there is, and always will be, room for exploitative play in all forms of poker. It’s a very complicated game and nobody can come close to replicating a completely GTO strategy. That said, more and more players are becoming very fundamentally solid, and given we are playing against the same few players in super high rollers over and over again, often on streams with hole cards exposed, I think having a strong theoretical understanding is important for surviving in the toughest lineups for an extended period of time.

There is a common misconception that players either play a ‘GTO style’ or an ‘exploitative style’ and it’s one or the other. Whereas in my opinion the better you understand how the game is played at equilibrium, the more opportunities you will find to exploit people because you will be able to more accurately identify their mistakes and imbalances. 

JR: How much study do you put in nowadays compared to earlier in your career? When you study, are you just memorizing as many charts and numbers as you can, or are you pulling up real-world situations that you found yourself in? How often do you review hands between sessions, or talk with friends about tough spots?

SC: I study much more nowadays than I did early in my career. When I was starting out there were far fewer tools for analyzing hands and most ’study’ was just discussing strategy with other people, or watching videos and trying to understand other people’s thought process. Nowadays there are very precise and powerful programs that can give definitive answers to questions that you used to just have to guess about.

When I play poker, I’ll note down hands that I wasn’t sure how to play in the moment and review them after the session. Beyond just trying to memorize charts, when I study I am looking to understand the ‘logic’ behind the outputs, and looking for big differences between how a computer would play the hand, what I see from my opponents, and how to adjust my strategy accordingly.  

JR: Your image has changed quite a bit since you first came on the scene (check out the picture above). Let’s just say that these days your look is much more intimidating at the table. Was that a conscious decision?

SC: Yeah. When I started playing live, I had a much more defensive presence. In an attempt to not give anything away I would mostly stare at the board or the felt and not look at my opponent much. At some point, I decided to try a different approach and realized that by directing my attention towards my opponent, I was being stared at less and probably giving less away myself. I also started noticing physical tells that I had been blind to previously. My results improved and I stuck with it. It was never an attempt to intimidate people, just to pick up information without giving it away.

JR: I read that you practice meditation. How has it helped you, and do you think meditation is something that most poker players would benefit from? Do you do anything else away from the table that helps with your poker game? Do you actively avoid social media?

SC: It’s hard to attribute specific things to meditation given that I am constantly trying to improve in various different ways. Gains from this type of thing are so incremental, but there are many studies showing meditation to be beneficial for everyone, not just poker players. I’d say regular exercise has the biggest noticeable impact on my emotional well being and poker game as a result. I do actively avoid social media, yes. I think it would be quite unlikely to be a net benefit to my life.

JR: You won Player of the Series honors at U.S. Poker Open in 2018 and then had four seven-figure scores to close the year. This year you almost won it again, and have another seven-figure score to start. Do you believe in momentum, or hot streaks, when it comes to tournament results?

SC: I think hot streaks mostly come as the result of variance, but also give small positive increases in your win rate from being more confident, and potentially from some players choosing to stay out of your way a bit more. 

JR: Do you believe high roller players have any responsibility to make the game more appealing to casual poker fans and viewers? Some players I’ve talked to say that the long tanking and quiet, intense nature of some of the high roller players is off-putting to the amateur recs, while others say it’s not their responsibility to make the game more approachable for others. Where do you stand on this debate?

SC: I don’t think players have a responsibility to be entertaining. The game is very competitive and it’s not easy to make a living at. Players are risking very large sums of money with nothing guaranteed in return and shouldn’t be blamed for taking it seriously. Almost all high rollers have shot clocks now and, in my opinion, watching the best players try their hardest to beat each other for tons of money is pretty entertaining in itself. 

JR: What does it mean to you to know that your peers voted you as the best player? You are currently no. 18 on the all-time live tournament earnings list, and no. 1 in England by a large margin (unless Sam Trickett starts playing again or you count Chris Moorman’s online winnings). What motivates you to play these days?  

SC: It feels amazing to be voted the best player by some of the most successful and talented players in the game. To me, that is a bigger accolade than any tournament or leaderboard win. Despite this, I know I have so many ways I can improve, and that’s what motivates me to keep playing.

I still love the game and love challenging myself against world class players. I don’t have any specific poker goals for the moment but I’ll continue to keep an eye on the all-time money list. It’s always fun overtaking legends of the game even though the landscape is completely different now with how many high roller tournaments there are.

JR: How long do you see yourself playing? In your last interview you said you were looking for a place to settle down and start a family. Does that mean you will be traveling and playing less? Could you see yourself pulling a Fedor Holz and ‘retiring,’ or at least taking a long break from poker?

SC: Like I said I still love poker and while that is still the case and while I still feel competitive at the highest stakes, I have no plans of stopping. My wife and I recently welcomed our first child into the world so my travel habits will change a little but taking a few months away from live poker hasn’t made me want to take a longer break. I’m excited to get back on the felt.

Chidwick On Plays That Make Your Opponents Uncomfortable

One general piece of advice I could give would be to make plays that target big portions of your opponent’s range.

For example, say you defend the big blind against a late-position open and the flop is very dry like K-5-5 rainbow. Most players are going to c-bet (continuation bet) this flop almost every time, and a big chunk of their range is going to be two unpaired cards below the king. By putting in a small check-raise on this flop, you force your opponent to defend some pretty weak holdings if he doesn’t want to massively overfold, and allow your bluffs to make a lot of money.

Another example given the same preflop action would be when your opponent checks back a fairly coordinated board, and you suspect that he will rarely be slow playing, and his range mostly contains medium-strength hands looking to get to showdown cheaply. If the turn doesn’t change the board, you can make very large bets (say 150 percent of the pot) with all your hands that beat this middling range and a bunch of bluffs, and put tons of pressure on all his middle/bottom pair and ace-high type holdings.

Once again you put him in a tough situation where he either has to let you steal the pot with your bluffs or give maximum value to your good hands. These are the types of situations that are very uncomfortable to be in and good players are constantly looking for opportunities to inflict them on their opponents.