Stephen Chidwick on Short-Deck Poker, And The Honour of Being The World Number One

Stephen Chidwick
Stephen Chidwick

Sam Trickett = $20,840,004.
Stephen Chidwick = $17,537,167.
At their live tournament peak, Trickett and Chidwick are like two finely tuned racehorses, blinkers ON, one direction – straight past the post.
And when it comes to the 3:45 Hendon Mob England All-Time Money List Stakes, Trickett has a slight lead, but there is a Red Rum feel about Chidwick, and I wonder how many more hurdles the pair will vault before the man from Deal takes the lead?
Does it matter?
Yes.
Trickett is a born winner.
Being number one is important.
And Chidwick?
Have a read of this before you answer that question.
I grab Chidwick during the break on Day 1B of the HKD 100,000 (USD 12,500) Short-Deck, Ante Only tournament at the Triton Poker Series in Jeju, South Korea.
Chidwick also featured at the Triton event in Montenegro, bubbling both No-Limit Hold’em games, preferring to give the Short-Deck Ante-Only a wide berth.
So what’s he doing in the deep end of Day 1B?
“To be honest the buy-in is a big factor,” Chidwick tells me before continuing. “This was an HKD 100,000 (USD 12,500), and the smallest event in Montenegro was HKD 250,000 (USD 32,000). It’s a bit more friendly to flick it in here and not be as worried about the result, have fun and see how it feels.”
The first time I interviewed Chidwick, I would guess his live tournament earnings totalled a few million. We recorded the interview via Skype. I doubt he will remember. Our first face-to-face was the World Poker Tour (WPT) Alpha8 in London. By this time, Chidwick had shifted gears and was a regular in the big games.
I wonder if he still has to pinch himself when he pauses for a moment realising he’s just paid a million bucks to play a game of cards?
“The buy-ins everywhere are getting pretty crazy,” says Chidwick. “Back when I started playing, a $10k was a huge event. Today, my average buy-in is $30,000, and I am at like $4.5m in buy-ins for the year. It’s crazy when you think how much money you’re putting down at these stops. Obviously, a lot of it’s invested money. I’m not putting it all down myself, but it’s still pretty crazy.”
The question is hackneyed, but I feel I have to ask it.
It’s such an obvious question.
It would take me ten months of writing articles like these to make the same money, Chidwick averages in buy-ins.
Does it feel different, playing in the bigger games?
“I was surprised playing the One Drop,” says Chidwick. “I was expecting it to feel different than it did. I sat down; I am playing against the same players, I have the same chips in front of me – it feels the same once you’ve played as much poker as I have. When you sit down and are dealt cards you’re just thinking about the decisions.”
Ah, decisions.
The pesky blighters that hang over us like a Damocles sword on a daily basis.
Should I go to the dentist to get these Goddam mercury fillings extracted?
Should I pick that empty coke can off the floor even though it’s not mine?
Should I play a $12,500 buy-in re-entry in a format of poker I have never played?
“It’s really fun,” says Chidwick reacting to my enquiry into his first Short-Deck experience, “Definitely, kind of confusing in some spots, especially when you see five-way multi-way hands, and you’re trying to figure out how likely it is that people have certain things. It’s definitely a game I would like to get better at and learn to play well.”
And how exactly do you study a game that has more bear traps than a Montana store called Grizzly Pete’s Bear Traps and More Bear Traps?
“There aren’t as many tools out there for Short Deck as there are for regular No-Limit Hold’em so you can’t study in the same way,” says Chidwick. “You can do some simple stuff with equity calculators by taking out the dead cards. I haven’t been able to study it very technically really. Otherwise, it’s about paying attention, what are people showing down and what is each hand worth.”
When you ask someone who has played Short-Deck for the first time to describe their experience, the word most commonly used is ‘fun’. You heard Chidwick use it earlier.
When you stand within a whisker from the player’s earlobes; watching; learning, you can feel the buzz around the table when suddenly, everyone moves all-in with every conceivable type of hand you can imagine.
There is music from the sun.
The raindrops hit the ground like Dave Grohl crashing a stick into a cymbal.
Everyone wants to dance.
And.
I.
Think.
Why didn’t we play this in our local $1/$1 home game?
Sure, right now we are witnessing the higher end of the spectrum, but surely this game could quickly catch on to become the SR-71 Blackbird of poker.
Cadillac’s are so 1970.
“It’s a good question,” says Chidwick before taking a pause. “I don’t think it’s spread even in cash games anywhere else except Asia. I am not sure if it would work if it showed up at the EPT or WSOP. I think people would enjoy it. It’s tough to jump in if it’s only the high rollers, maybe if they tried to run lower buy-in tournaments?”
I can’t find my initial interview with Chidwick anywhere online (I thought Google knew everything). So I may be off the mark here, but I am positive, Chidwick told me during that tete-a-tete that he never deposited a single cent in an online poker account, and now here he is, with $17.5m in earnings and the mantle of Global Poker Index (GPI) #1 sewn into the collar of his school jumper.
How does that feel?
“It feels really amazing,” says Chidwick with pride. “It’s a goal I have had for a long time. It’s felt like I’ve played high rollers for a long while without getting the results that matched the effort, studying and preparation I was putting in. This year, to have run as well as I have and finally reach number one is a dream come true, and getting as many comments from my peers saying – I wouldn’t say it’s deserved to win all the tournaments that I have been winning – but to hear that your peers respect you is really nice.”
When Chidwick refers to not getting the results that matched the effort, I imagine him locked away in his study, monocle crunched in his eye socket, sipping Jasmine tea from a yellow china cup coated with the motif of a dragon, running hand calculations through some super-duper AI, only to find that despite hitting the rail harder than an orc’s sword hits the helmet of a dwarf, he has played perfect poker.
“Never perfect, far from that,” says Chidwick, modestly. “Knowing how many hours I was putting in away from the table, looking around at my competition thinking they aren’t working as hard as me. As much as friends and poker players were telling me that I was running bad, there is always that thought in the back of your head that something is missing that I don’t have. Then you win a couple of tournaments, and you realise that you get really good hands repeatedly and when you get all-in you win them all, and you have all the chips.”
I’m going to sound like my mum, now.
Once you reach the top, the only way is down.
With $4m+ in buy-ins this year, will that grow as Chidwick tries to cement his view at the top of poker’s mountain, peering down at the likes of Adrian Mateos and Justin Bonomo to pour the odd barrel of burning oil down the side as they slam their climbing picks into the earth,
Does he feel the pressure of being the best?
“It takes the pressure off more than anything,” says Chidwick. “I am reaching a time where I will play less, travel less and start a family. Getting to the number one spot by this time is important. I would be disappointed not to have made it by now because it was a major goal for me. I am chasing the longest streak at #1, but I don’t feel pressured. I am enjoying the game at the level I am at, it’s still really fun for me.”
And with that, Chidwick shakes my hand, stands up, stretches, releases a little steam from his nostrils, and gets back into the race.