Would you pay $2,500 for coaching from Stephen Chidwick

The best player in the world is not cheap if you want him to be your mentor; could it be worth the price?

I was being nosy this week and looking at the solver tool Octopi Poker. I know nothing about it, really. A lot of incredibly impressive people are advocates of it, so for that reason I am sure that it is excellent. 

I notice they have a private coaching section on the website where some of their advocates can sell their services. These were some of the best players in the world, including Jeremy Ausmus, Sam Greenwood and Brock Wilson. So I was naturally curious how much they charged. 

No big surprises. They all charged a sizeable hourly rate for their services, most notably Stephen Chidwick, who charges $2,500 a session or $10,000 for five sessions.

I personally regard Chidwick as being the best No Limit Hold'em player in the world alongside Adrian Mateos, which led me to wonder: Is $2,500 a bargain?

Paying for a lifetime of experience

First of all, the reason that Chidwick can charge this much is not necessarily because an hour with him is worth $2,500; it's about whether it's worth his time to do it.

When you factor in the fact that he crushes tournaments with six- and seven-figure buy-ins, his hourly rate must be something equivalent to that. 

I am reminded of a story of Pablo Picasso. A woman asked him to sketch something on a piece of paper. He did, gave it back to her, and said that it would cost $10,000. She replied that it only took you five minutes to do the sketch. To which he replied, "The sketch may have taken me five minutes, but learning took me thirty years."

You're not just paying for the hour; you're paying for the career that led up to him becoming Stephen Chidwick. 

The EV loss of coaching

The main reason I think he charges so much is that, by giving away his secrets, he probably hurts his own game doing so. The Super High Roller scene is very small. Everyone who plays in them is an absolute crusher, and even the recreational players are very, very good. 

In a game of small edges, where you are playing against the same players over and over again, giving away your secrets is likely to really hurt your win rate. I also expect that anyone who is willing to pay $2,500 an hour for coaching with Chidwick is precisely the sort of person who will be playing in these events. 

So it's not necessarily that his coaching is actually worth $2,500 an hour (although I suspect it is very valuable). It's the case that that's how much he thinks it's worth potentially giving up some EV to do it.