When Stephen Chidwick pulled back the curtain on how much of his $76,035,909 in recorded tournament earnings are profit in a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread, he surprised many by stating that the figure lies "somewhere in the 5-10M range."
In the tournament poker landscape, it's rare to see a player of Chidwick's caliber be so upfront about the extent to which career earning figures misrepresent any particular player's profitability. While it's long been clear that figures reported by The Hendon Mob, by no fault of its own, do not provide the entire picture, few top tournament professionals have acknowledged the disparity present and even fewer have gone out of their way, like Chidwick, to clarify the reality of the situation.
Chidwick's revelation led to much conjecture and gave life to several misconceptions – which leads us to his clarifying post linked below.
Misconceptions and clarifications
In his post, Chidwick identified four misconceptions generated by his reply and provided context for each:
Misconception 1: That figure closely resembles the profit I took home from these tournaments.
Chidwick clarified that the piece of himself he has in each tournament varies heavily, based on factors like field size, buy-in amount, and liquidity. As a result, the figures he stated (or the ones listed on The Hendon Mob) do not resemble the amount of money Chidwick has taken home from tournaments.
Misconception 2: I didn’t have all my action therefore I took home less than that figure.
Chidwick illustrated how swapping and selling action across multiple events in a series can obfuscate the true nature of profit.
"Say I play 2 tournaments: a $10k which I cash for $200k, and a $100k where I sell or swap out half my action which I brick," he wrote. "My results in terms of cashes minus buy-ins are +$90k. But I actually take home $140k +/- whatever I win/lose from swaps + any markup from action sold."
Misconception 3: You have to be playing huge to make a decent amount of EV.
Chidwick explained how his return on investment (ROI) across his career is skewed by results on the higher end of his spectrum of buy-ins. With normalized buy-ins, Chidwick's ROI stands at over 30% – but he thinks it's actually less.
Misconception 4: The dream is dead.
In response to another question in the Ask Me Anything thread, Chidwick said that being a tournament pro isn't sustainable for most people. In his X post, Chidwick added further nuance to the idea, stating:
"While I stand by my statement (in that I would advise few people to rely on MTTs as their main or only source of income), I’ll add a caveat: if you love it, you work hard, and you’re smart about game selection and risk management, you can absolutely make a living playing exclusively tournaments even if you don’t run especially well.
"That said, there are certainly easier ways to make a living…"
