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When Results are Everything

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When Results are Everything

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Chris Pimmer

Elite Pro

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When Results are Everything

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Chris Pimmer

POSTED Jul 15, 2022

As the title would suggest, Chris Pimmer explores the pros and cons of being results oriented and how to avoid the negative spiral that can be caused when you place too much importance on the outcome and not worrying enough about the process.

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RunItTw1ce 2 years, 8 months ago

There were so many things in this video that were just pure gold.

1) The chart that showed how one might envision their career with a nice 45-degree line of consistent profit. A long with the blue line in the chart of how a person’s journey goes being much more volatile in the short term, but still end up in the same spot in the end.

2) Fear of pain or fear of potential pain was the biggest one for me. I went from 25NL up to 200NL and the first 50k hands of 200NL I was winning 6-8bb/100, which was more than I expected. Then I hit a 27 buy-in downswing and ended up dropping down stakes to work on my fundamentals. The 27 buy-ins were lost over about 70k hands, and I concluded that my skills were not enough to compete and maybe I just got lucky the first 50k hands. For the past 7 months I have continued to work on my strategy, but the fear of potential pain from the 27 buy-ins is still there in my head. Despite going back through the hands on the downswing and realizing I am not making the same mistakes today I have not attempted another shot. The consistency I have at the lower levels and being comfortable has made me content.

If you have result oriented thinking with ways to think positive that would be greatly appreciated. Instead of me thinking about the 27 buy-in downswing I had, being able to focus on where I'm at overall or think about the 40 buy-in upswing I had before the downswing. I have a friend who has been a professional since around 2003. I speak to him some times about variance and dealing with downswings. I asked him how he is able to handle such huge swings and climb the stakes without letting emotions affect his daily life. His response was simply "I only think about how much I can win." This is the point that I want to reach, where I don't have the negative thoughts of past results or feat of pain for future results. I'm just a constant pro who manages his bankroll and executes his strategy every day without having emotions play a part.

Becoming Tao would be great!

Chris Pimmer 2 years, 8 months ago

Some great observations you have and thanks for the detailed comment.
Notice how you are quite focused on results here, of course you should not lie about something if it ain't so. But make it a habit of yours to always throw in some ideas of how you execute and what you do, how you do it, in any discussion you have about poker and stay away from talking about results if you can. The more you talk about results, the more you empower them, the more you will stay focused on them.

About your moving up, instead of just looking at it as moving up, play the bigger game a little more often and increase slowly over time, but do not play it all the time yet.
Simple examples could be, you play once a week when you feel really fresh or twice a week. That is of course if you still want to implement playing higher.
Remember how you used to play much lower and once you got used to a bigger game, it was not a problem anymore?
You are making too big a deal out of the moving up part, make it a smaller deal, do the move in smaller steps, it does not have to be one big step and never look back. In fact even if you are fully integrated into 200NL. you can still have days where you play 100NL instead. Don't make it a be all end all thing.
Hope this gives some ideas :)

emsterdad 2 years, 8 months ago

For me… it’s really the moving up. I really hate to be in the micros. Playing 4nl, 10nl which is literally lunch money. However, I also don’t want to deposit thousands to play 100nl+

I am also a bit too excited to start playing in the evening as a hobby. I often are already a bi down in the first 10 minutes because “it’s 3 betting time!!”

Chris Pimmer 2 years, 8 months ago

So here just as we have it with Runittwice, you are already talking about how much you are down in the first 10 minutes.
Look at how zoomed in this is on such a tiny tiny, non existent sample.
What do 10 minutes of poker mean in comparison to the body of work that you either have or will in the future put out?
What does 1 hour mean?
1 week?
and when you say, it's 3betting time, yeah I get it, I understand, but this is not useful to talk like this. If people are 3betting too much, you don't just say, oh it is 3betting time and my good hands do not get respect.
Instead you talk about how you will exploit and punish people that play or 3bet too wide and how you will execute the patience to wait for your moment instead of thinking how it is happening to you and how you would do better if this and that...
I am not attacking you btw, not at all, I am just notifying you of potential dangers in the way you might think or speak with others.
All in good faith and love :)

emsterdad 2 years, 8 months ago

Ohh believe me, I appreciate it!

With 3 betting time I do actually mean me. So I get very excited that I am playing again and man, I love 3 betting people and find all reasons to do so. I only get to play 1,5 hours a day so I often feel, unnecessarily, that now I really need to get the most out of it.

And it’s very result oriented. I can literally refresh my pokertraxker 4 multiple times during a session to see “if it’s going well”. I check if my vpip/pfr is reasonable (which is more about strategy) but also how much I am up or down.

I actually did check how fast I would be at 50nl and in a 1bb per 100 that would be 1 year. That was actually very relaxing to know. That if just keep playing that 1,5 hour a day at some point I will play higher.

It’s just difficult at times to see 92c and think “ohh no a 4 bet!!”, a snicker is more expensive to call ��

Jeff_ 2 years, 7 months ago

Pretty good one, liked it!

Think I have some flip side to this story. I won't tell it is perfect or great by any means but being ''light result oriented'' person in poker isn't bad. Main reason why I think so - it can bring spark/interest and motivation! Same as bringing stress and depression :D

Yet ''Avoid potential pain" is big one for me. Quickly explains why don't want to go to a dentist.

Chris Pimmer 2 years, 7 months ago

Hey Jeff_ fair point, however, then we would have to look at the idea of motivation in the first place, but this goes a little too deep for a post.
Overall it is not totally bad to keep an eye on some things, if they are indicators to how you want to move and behave. If your motivation however comes from an external factor i.e. money, fame, then this will also create a potential downward spiral in many directions. You might make your self worth or how you think about yourself dependant on this thing and thus, when you run really bad, now you are in your mind not as good a person or you are just doing something wrong all the time and are unable to get yourself ouot of it (all in your mind).
Then you start thinking, oh well, I just never had the discipline to do this or that and that's just what it is. Discipline, or willpower however, is not the key thing and if you think that it is the main factor for all things then you will find yourself also on quite the roller coaster at times, or even on a pure downward trajectory, because if you do not have enough, you will always think you need to build it, and if you do not know how, then you can easily become hopeless.
So, these extreme mindsets are quite volatile, sure there are a select few for whom they work, and one of the reasons for that is actually luck, being in the right situation at the right time, not having created havoc in other areas in your life, so that you were able to take advantage of something that came up and yet for others, they are simply built in a way that they idea of hardcore discipline and external factors for motivation keeps them afloat long enough to overcome some of the hurdles.
But this is the exception not the norm.
If you keep these ideas (results orientedness, discipline, willpower, goal setting) within reasonable ranges and don't depend on them for your self worth, you are likely not to trouble yourself too much.
Everything you do, will always have some new branches of the game tree that will be created, some of them you will be aware of, perhaps because you aim for them, while others only show up later or you are not aware that they were created in the first place.

Oh and just because something has not shown up as a net negative for you, is not evidence that it is positive. Things need to be evaluated both in context and in long term or scalable effects.
Eating one huge burger might not be a problem, but just because it does not immediately kill you, does not show you that you should be eating 10 each day for the rest of your life.
Or if you come home from a tough day at work and you want some immediate energy and then eat something highly processed and sugary, it might provide some relief in the short term, but if you do this every day, you will likely at some point gain weight and everything in your life will become more difficult, because you might have a much harder time to move around, perhaps get out of bed, in the morning everything hurts and aches and thus, the short term motivation or relief it gives you to have that little snack, can turn into something that costs you a lot long term.

emsterdad 2 years, 7 months ago

The most fascinating thing to me is that most of the spiritual / philosophical stuff (Seneca, Tao, Mush etc) are now being backed by science (Huberman, Peterson etc)

Chris Pimmer 2 years, 7 months ago

emsterdad they are essentially the same, just that one takes a little more time, because of how precise it aims to be and using language as a carrier for the message.
What I mean is, science tries to explain many things using language and numbers.
Try explaining to someone precisely how to ride a bike.
It is impossible. Yet somehow most people know or can learn how to do it very well.
So the way to explain a lot of things is very limited due to the very nature of how they are trying to be explained.
If you do not want to look at them as the same, that is fine as well, then just think of them as two ways that support each other. One lends its arguments to the other.

TRUEPOWER 10 months ago

I think so many things in here are critical to understand on your poker journey.

I was on a 14 session win streak at the casino. During it, it almost feels like wow I’m up so many buy ins, I’m gonna be able to move up stakes if I keep this up, kinda unrealistic expectations you have based on your previous recent results. Like immediately after I took like a 5 session losing streak was kinda bummed out by it lol. Upset at myself like wow I keep losing. Forgetting that 14 winning session streak I was on lol.

You can’t look it at like that though. Sometimes I’ll play a higher stakes. Win a little bit and move back down. Maybe it’s because a fear of losing. Be winning small and cut the session short because I don’t want to lose what I’ve won. Although if I just continue to play, you’ll have a chance to win even more than you’ve won. Of course the chance of busting and having to rebuy is always there, it’s important to keep pushing!

Avoiding potential pain… is something. I’ve experienced, like during a downswing, ahhh hope I don’t get stacked again … haha

Chris Pimmer 10 months ago

It is so easy to get zoomed in on one thing and thus lose touch with what is actually even more true.
Which is why learning to zoom out is one of the key things to learn.

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