{"id":35563,"date":"2026-01-20T19:50:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T19:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/?p=35563"},"modified":"2026-01-20T19:50:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T19:50:40","slug":"stephen-chidwick-shares-poker-knowledge-in-ama-on-reddit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/stephen-chidwick-shares-poker-knowledge-in-ama-on-reddit\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Chidwick Shares Poker Knowledge in AMA on Reddit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

High-stakes tournament pro Stephen Chidwick<\/a> brought his expertise and his fantastic handlebar mustache to Reddit for an Ask Me Anything session, on Monday, and the members of \/poker brought their A-game by asking the $76 million man a bunch of great questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stephen
Stephen Chidwick<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The English superstar who sits in second on Hendon Mob’s all-time poker cash<\/a> list is a coach at Octopi Poker. He was on Reddit to answer questions and give away a bunch of subscriptions to the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some of the highlights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q<\/strong>: Hey Stephen! With 76 million in winnings, how much is profit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chidwick<\/strong>: I don\u2019t have exact numbers from the earlier part of my career but somewhere in the 5-10 million range<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q<\/strong>: What\u2019s your pre-game rituals look like? Do you listen to any music or podcasts? Study a little bit before you play or do you just try to get a good nights rest and play your best when it\u2019s time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chidwick<\/strong>: I try to prioritize sleep. If I can, I get sunlight and exercise before I play — that\u2019s ideal but not always possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I know my table draw (day 2+), I\u2019ll usually go through any notes I have on my opponents and formulate a general plan for how I\u2019m going to approach common situations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll virtually always do some kind of meditation or breathing exercise just prior to playing. Sometimes music, sometimes philosophical or inspirational content depending on what I feel like I need in the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q<\/strong>: As someone who\u2019s played before and after widespread solver adoption, what important skill has become undervalued in modern MTTs\u2014and how should serious players train it today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chidwick<\/strong>: Good question. Probably the skill of putting people on ranges and thinking through the hand from first principles\/incorporating intuition into your strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to look up the “answers” in a sim and not go deeper into how people are actually playing\/adjust for the myriad factors the sim doesn\u2019t take into account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like to challenge myself to put people on specific hands when I\u2019m watching them in pots I\u2019m not involved in and seeing how often I get it right or am completely surprised by what they show down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q<\/strong>: Is studying super specific spots in a solver mandatory for success in today’s poker climate or can you still get by with solid fundamentals and vibes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chidwick<\/strong>: I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s mandatory — there are successful players at the highest stakes who don\u2019t put in much solver time — but you need to have good vibes in that case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It depends what you mean by super specific versus solid fundamentals. You definitely need a baseline understanding, although it also matters what you\u2019re playing and what kind of aspirations you have. You can always get by as long as you\u2019re playing better than your opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q<\/strong>: What was your “Aha” moment that completely changed your game to know you will be a winning player and what was it (at that time )?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chidwick<\/strong>: I can\u2019t think of a single “aha” moment that completely changed my game. More just a progression of very many small changes. I guess one moment that stands out was the first time I used piosolver when it was very new\u2026I recognized right away how powerful it was and how much could be learnt from it and at that point kinda went all-in on study to try to get ahead of everyone else knowing that sooner or later it would become widespread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q<\/strong>: How do you decide whether to play a GTO strategy or play based on \u201cgut feeling?\u201d How do you exploit GTO players in MTTs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chidwick<\/strong>: It\u2019s not really either\/or. I\u2019m always looking to mix the two in the appropriate degree based on how strong the gut feeling is, how good my opponent is, how big of a deviation I would be making\/how exploitable it would be, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody plays close enough to GTO that you can\u2019t find weaknesses, but in the spirit of the question I\u2019ll say that in a GTO output you will frequently run into situations where you\u2019re indifferent between two or more options. eg. calling or folding with a bluffcatcher on the river. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if there\u2019s any piece of information throughout the whole hand that either increases or decreases the chance of him having any one part of his range (eg. timing tells, physical tells, an unconscious bias, etc.), now I can pure call or pure fold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I know my opponent is purely trying to play GTO and won\u2019t adjust, I will look for any small reason to go for an exploit, knowing that the EVs are theoretically the same anyway, so I\u2019m not risking anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s so much more in the AMA, so check out the whole thing on Reddit<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High-stakes tournament pro Stephen Chidwick brought his expertise and his fantastic handlebar mustache to Reddit for an Ask Me Anything session, on Monday, and the members of \/poker brought their A-game by asking the $76 million man a bunch of great questions. The English superstar who sits in second on Hendon Mob’s all-time poker cash […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":35482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[497,525,499,7415,517,519,501],"tags":[],"vertical":[],"class_list":["post-35563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-cardschat-community","category-poker","category-poker-news","category-interviews","category-poker-strategy","category-poker-tournaments"],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":35563},"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.casino.us\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/StephenChidwickSuperHighRollerBowlPLO15.1K_LutherR_Weisman_SuperHighRollerBowlPLO_LutherR_-07301_c382d874-5a59-46db-9d87-e6a54958b320-600x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/www.casino.us\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/StephenChidwickSuperHighRollerBowlPLO15.1K_LutherR_Weisman_SuperHighRollerBowlPLO_LutherR_-07301_c382d874-5a59-46db-9d87-e6a54958b320-600x600.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Bob Pajich","author_link":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/author\/bob-pajich\/"},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35563"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.casino.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=35563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}