Process-Over-Results Scoring
Grade yourself on how well you followed your best process, not on the outcome
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
When luck sits between your decisions and your results, outcome-based feedback is misleading: you can play a hand perfectly and still lose, or blunder and still win. Boeree's fix is to separate decision quality from 'resulting'. Away from the table you design a step-by-step thinking process you believe is optimal, refining it by studying with better players. During play you simply execute that process. Then, crucially, you review yourself not on money won but on how faithfully you followed the process. This makes your scoreboard something you actually control, dampens tilt during downswings, and turns every session into clean signal about your judgement rather than noisy signal about your luck.
Origin
Boeree developed this over a professional poker career, working closely with her partner Igor and other pros to reverse-engineer an optimal in-hand thinking process. She adopted 'review process, not results' as her core metric because it was the healthiest way to survive multi-month downswings.
Core principles
- 01In any luck-influenced domain a good decision can lose and a bad decision can win
- 02You control your process; you never control the cards
- 03Results are a noisy signal over small samples; process adherence is measurable right now
- 04Scoring process, not P&L, builds resilience against inevitable downswings
- 05The optimal way to think is best designed in advance, in a calm vacuum
How to run it
- 1
Design the process in a vacuum
Between sessions, while calm, write out the step-by-step way you know is the optimal method to think through a decision.
Pro tip Do this when nothing is at stake so emotion doesn't distort it.
- 2
Refine it with better performers
Study how stronger players or peers reason through the same situations and adopt the steps that work for you.
Pro tip Emulate first, then keep only what fits your temperament.
- 3
Execute the process live
In the moment, follow your defined steps rather than reacting to how the result seems to be trending.
Watch out Don't abandon the process just because you're on a heater or a cold streak.
- 4
Review adherence, not outcome
After the session look back only at how closely you followed your process, ignoring the win or loss.
Pro tip Make process-adherence your new scoreboard.
- 5
Direct your emotions correctly
Feel dissatisfied only when you deviated from the process; refuse to beat yourself up over unlucky-but-correct decisions.
Watch out Judging yourself by results reintroduces exactly the volatility this method removes.
In the wild
During long stretches of not winning, Boeree found her results-obsessed brain spiralling. She and a coach built the mantra 'I will not worry about the results, I will focus on my process and the results will take care of themselves,' and she began ending each tournament by grading her process adherence instead of her cash. She noticed she never got as annoyed reviewing process as she did staring at results — and that it made her measurably more resilient.
→ More stable emotional state and better long-run learning across an 11-year pro career.
Common mistakes
Confusing a good result with a good decision
Winning after a reckless play convinces you the play was right, teaching the wrong lesson for next time.
Only designing the process mid-crisis
Trying to define 'optimal thinking' while tilting means emotion writes the process; it must be built in a calm vacuum first.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone making repeated high-variance decisions under uncertainty — poker players, traders, founders, athletes.
Not ideal for
Deterministic, full-information tasks where the outcome cleanly reflects decision quality.
From the transcript
“at the end of a tournament I don't look back and see how much I won or not, I look back to see how closely…”
“I will not worry about the results, I will focus on my process and the results will take care of themselves”
From the episode
Liv Boeree: Poker Rules Of Life, Game Theory, AI & Effective Altruism
Liv Boeree