Stephen Chidwick: “The biggest thing for me has been self awareness”

Mental Health & Coping Mechanisms

• How do you balance your mental health with a grueling tournament schedule?

I try to incorporate as much mental health stuff into my routine as I have time for… meditation, exercise, sunlight, good sleep hygiene, etc.
And then accept that I’m gonna make mistakes and not make them worse by beating myself up about them.

• How do you protect yourself from manic or depressive episodes while playing? Have you ever gotten into a tight spot where you feel an episode looming but you need to play?

The biggest thing for me has been self-awareness. Early recognition of ‘symptoms’ and knowledge of what kinds of behaviors have the biggest impact on them, one way or the other. Meditation and introspection have been instrumental in this regard.

• Please tell us about a time when you were the happiest. What do you like about yourself the most?

The birth of my daughter probably tops the list, but generally I’m the happiest when I’m fully present in the moment.

I think I was so drawn to games/sports most of my life because they were my most consistent access point to being able to ‘get out of my head’ and be present. But I’ve had moments when I’ve felt profoundly happy doing something mundane like washing dishes.
What do I like most about myself? I usually see the best in people.

Poker Experience and Game Habits

• Is it true you never deposited a single dollar and built it all from freerolls?

There was a lot more freeroll EV to be had 20 years ago.

• How conscious are you of your posture when playing? We are opposite ends of the slouch/sit-up-straight spectrum.

Low-medium. It’s mostly a habit at this point, but noticing myself in a sloppy posture is a sign that I’m a bit mentally checked out.

• Can you speak on the high-stakes MTT landscape in terms of staking, selling action, etc? Lots of speculation from people nowhere near the space.

A handful of people are backed for the highest stuff, many are backed up to a certain point and sell action above that to cap the risk on any given tournament, and then lots of people just sell action for each tournament individually with varying sizes of pieces for themselves. Few people have 100% of themselves in every tournament, and that includes many of the wealthy VIPs in the invitationals.

• What poker player do you look up to?

There’s a lot. I’ll go with Erik Seidel. Humble, interesting, funny, kind — all-around great guy.

Success in Poker and Life

How much (if any) of your success and aptitude do you attribute to a higher power?

Difficult question to answer. I will say that I rejected these kinds of thoughts for a long time and have become more and more open to them in recent years. It does feel like there has been a correlation between my explorations in these areas and personal growth in particular, but also the subjective evaluation of performance in poker.

• Do you believe it’s possible to achieve “the long run” in poker?

Depends how you’re defining it. It’s a lot harder in tournaments.

• Can you share your graph in buy-ins? Or something altered?

This is ~1350 bullets over the last 8 years… wasn’t keeping track before that. It looks a lot less pretty without normalized buy-ins.

If you could go back in time, what one piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

Many of the things you think are true are not.