– General Introduction –
Stephen Chidwick is a British professional poker player. He was born on May 10th, 1989 in Deal, England.
He started off as an online MTT and S&G player, playing under the screen name “stevie444” on PokerStars and Full Tilt. He transitioned to live tournaments in 2008. Since then, he racked up over $37 million in live tournament winnings, making him the biggest live tournament earner ever in Britain. He also has a WSOP bracelet, from the 2019 $25K Pot Limit Omaha High Roller event.
– Key Career Dates –
- 2006: He starts playing online tournaments.
- 2009: He comes in second in a $300 Full Tilt Online Poker Series event for $142,155. That is his biggest single online tournament cash to date.
- 2018: He becomes the highest ranked player on the Global Poker Index ranking.
- 2019: He wins his first WSOP bracelet. He finishes first in the $25,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller event for $1,618,417. He also finishes second in the HK$1,000,000 Triton Refresh event for $1,128,685. His 4th place finish at the £1,050,000 Triton Million brought him $5,368,947. That is his biggest single live tournament cash to date.
- 2020: Becomes Australian Poker Open Champion by finishing runner-up in the A$25,000 No Limit Hold’em (Event #3) for $182,721 and only two days later taking down the A$25,000 No Limit Hold’em (Event #5) for $269,852.
– Stephen Chidwick’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
There’s little information available about Chidwick’s early career. He said this in an interview for the PokerStars Blog about his younger years:
“Pretty much whatever my hobby was I wanted to do that all the time and get as good as possible. And really, it could be absolutely anything. It could be a really silly computer flash game. Before poker my main passion was golf and I was practicing a lot and trying to get as good as I could.”
Many sources claim that he actually built his entire bankroll from freeroll tournaments on PS and Full Tilt. He then moved on to play Sit&Go’s. His first results on the online tournament database PocketFives come from 2006.
According to his bio on Phil Galfond’s poker site RunItOnce, he won 101 seats to the WSOP Main Event through online satellites before he turned old enough to legally play in the United States.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Stephen Chidwick has over $37 million in live tournament earnings, according to HendonMob. That makes him #1 on the England all time money list and #6 on the general all time money list. He accumulated his results over the span of 13 years – he has 218 live cashes total on his tally.
He started on the live tournament scene after a huge amount of success in online poker. The first score on his HendonMob profile is from 2008, when he won the $1,000 NLHE event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in the Bahamas. He earned $88,760 with that victory.
Since then, he’s been regularly playing high buy-in events around the world. One of his favorite tournament series is the European Poker Tour where he cashed in events 29 times.
In 2013, he came in 3rd in the €5,300 EPT Main Event in Prague for $517,992. The next year, back in Prague, he finished 3rd again, this time in the €50,000 EPT Super High Roller for $436,236. In 2016, at the €100,000 EPT High Roller in Monte Carlo, he finished 6th and won $428,358.
2018 was an outstanding year for Chidwick. He became the #1 ranked player on the Global Poker Index. GPI tracks the tournament score of players around the world and uses a unique point system that takes into account ROI, recent events, and more in order to rank the poker pros. Chidwick said he was very eager to be on the top of that list.
That year, he finished 3rd in the $300K Aria Super High Roller Bowl for $1,512,000; finished 2nd in the partypoker MILLIONS Barcelona €100K Super High Roller for $1,352,531; came in 3rd in the Main Event at the partypoker MILLIONS Barcelona for $1,233,654; and took 6th place in the HK$2,100,000 Macau Super High Roller Bowl for $1,298,521, just to list a few of his biggest tournament scores from then.
Unfortunately for him, Chidwick’s exceptional 2018 results were overshadowed by Justin Bonomo’s even more insane heater that year.
Chidwick’s also a regular feature in the Triton High Roller Series events. In 2019, he took 2nd place in the HK$1,000,000 Triton Refresh event and won $1,128,685.
He’s also seen success in another new high roller series. In 2018, he became the “series champion” of the inaugural US Poker Open. This means that over the course of the series’ 8 events, he accumulated the most money in cashes. He won 2 events and made it in the money in 3 more.
In 2020, he added the title of Australian Poker Open Champion to his resumé by scoring three results at the Gold Coast and edging out Andreas Nemeth in second and Michael Addamo in third on the leaderboard.
In June 2021, he was back at the US Poker Open and made a runner-up finish in the $50,000 NLHE event for $504,000.
→ World Series of Poker ←
Chidwick has 1 WSOP gold bracelet to his name as of now. He took down the $25,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller event for $1,618,417 in 2019. That is his biggest single live tournament cash to date. He beat James Chen from Taiwan heads-up for the title.
The first time he made a 6-figure live tournament score was also in a World Series event. It was the 2011 $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em tournament in which he came in 4th for $198,927.
On top of his bracelet, he has a slew of other impressive scores from the WSOP as well.
He was the runner-up in the $10K 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo event in 2015, winning $180,529. He finished 3rd in the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. for $112,106 in 2012. In 2021, he took 3rd place again, in the $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty NLHE freezeout event for $200,598 that time.
In 2018, he came in 6th in the $100,000 No Limit Hold’em High Roller for $484,551. At the final table, he had to face such poker greats as Fedor Holz, Jason Koon or Bryn Kenney.
Overall, Chidwick has cashed in 66 WSOP tournaments for a combined $4.352 million.
→ Live Cash Games ←
When it comes to live poker, Stephen Chidwick has focused exclusively on tournaments. He hasn’t appeared on any televised or live streamed cash game sessions, nor has he spoken publicly about playing live cash games.
→ Online Poker ←
As we wrote in our intro, Chidwick started his poker career as an online S&G and MTT player.
His PokerStars account, stevie444, has over $3.9 million in tournament cashes. His Full Tilt account with the same screen name has $1.05 million. Overall, across all online poker sites, he has a total of $5.350 million in tracked cashes on PocketFives.
The first score on his tally comes from October 2006. He finished 15th place in a $109 tournament on UltimateBet and “won” $104 – so technically, he lost $5. The first time he cashed for more than $10,000 in an online tournament was in January 2007, when he won a $215 tourney for $45,000 on UB.
He earned a $142,155 score by coming in second in a $300 Full Tilt Online Poker Series event in 2009. A year later, he finished 3rd in a $215 World Championship of Online Poker 6-Max event for $130,515.
On 5th July 2020, he beat his online result record by excelling in the partypoker High Roller Club and winning two events in one day, the $5,200 Big Game for $191,727 and the Mix-Max 2nd Chance for $176,000.
Chidwick also has a few online cash game hands tracked on HighstakesDB. On Stars, he has 3,607 hands played on record and he’s down around $42,500. Those hands are mostly from mixed games.
→ Scandals ←
Chidwick’s “Chip and a Chair”
At the final table of the $100K High Roller at the 2019 PCA, Chidwick made a very unusual decision.
On the river, he bluffed with a 590,000-chip bet, leaving only a 5,000 chip behind. His opponent, Sam Greenwood, was holding the nut flush, so he moved all-in – and Chidwick folded. Given the fact that this happened at the 15,000/30,000 blind level, he left himself with one 6th of a big blind.
“I left a chip behind because in the event the bluff doesn’t work, if I manage to make it through the blinds doubling up once or twice, Steffen was on the other side of the table with a short stack, and there’s a non-zero chance he busts before I do and I get to ladder up. In the event I was value betting in that situation, the extra 5,000-chips gained wouldn’t be as important”- Chidwick later explained his strange move to pokernews.com.
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