“The Red Line Myth” by w34z3l – Page 3

w34z3l · 2012-11-09T18:03:31Z

The Red-Line Myth These days having a graph with a break-even/positive red-line is the fashion. Ironically it could be losing you a lot of money. The purpose of this post is not to bash players with a positive red-line; some very sick players have these type of graphs. The purpose is to demonstrate how some players are burning money to achieve it - and in some instances might not be playing as well as players with a falling red-line. The Relation between Red and Blue The first thing to understand is that it is virtually impossible to change your non-showdown winnings without affecting your showdown winnings. Any change you make to red will nearly always have an effect on blue. Imagine you check behind in a thin river situation with the best hand. Those winnings will always go to the blue line. What if you bet though? Likely your opponent might fold and those winnings will now hit your red line instead of your blue line. You've increased your red line at the expense of your blue line. What should influence your decision in whether to sacrifice your blue line in exchange for a better red line? The value of red and blue lines is exactly equivalent. $1 in the red line is worth exactly $1 in the blue line. Simply put, you want to choose the option that makes you the most money and not be influenced by whether that money will hit red or blue. If you had a choice between $1 increase to your red line, or a $1.50 increase to your blue line, the decision should be pretty straightforward. We are going to consider 3 general scenarios where players are sacrificing a large chunk of blue line to achieve a smaller amount of red-line. In other words they are arbitrarily making plays that increase their red line to produce a "cool" graph, but not maximising their value in the long run. Afterwards we will consider 3 ways to improve red-line while sacrificing a smaller amount of blue-line. 3 ways of Losing EV by focusing on Red Line 1 - Bluffing with the best hand Imagine you reach a river scenario OOP where you have double barrelled with a pair. For the sake of simplicity (and we will do this in all examples) let's assume our pair is good, our opponent has a busted draw, and he loves to bluff. (In reality you won't know this for certain but you can make your best estimates based on ranges and your hand reading ability). There is $100 in the pot. Since we know we have the best hand and our opponent will fold his draw we can easily add $100 to our red-line by betting and taking down the pot. If we were to check however and let our opponent bluff, we are clearly going to make more money than this. Specifically we will make the average amount villain bets multiplied by the frequency he bets (since we know we are good) on top of the $100. Betting here will increase your red-line but is essentially burning money since check-calling will result in an even bigger net-gain to your blue line. 2 - Value betting too thin Hopefully you are aware that in order for a value bet to be profitable you need to get called by worse >50% of the time. The amount of money already in the pot does not factor into value-bet calculations. Let's imagine we are on the river in position and we know when we bet our opponent will show up with a worse hand only 40% of the time. Our value-bet is losing us money, we should check-back, adding to our blue-line. When we do bet and our opponent has a worse hand, those winnings sometimes go to the red-line instead of the blue-line. The play overall is losing money and is a bad one, but it also has the side effect of transferring some of our winnings to the red-line category. 3- Bluffing in bad spots Bluffing against calling-stations or players with strong ranges is usually not going to pay off. When your bluff fails it is not going to be represented in your red-line (assuming you reach showdown), it's your blue-line that takes a big hit. The only time your red-line is affected is when your bluff works and your red line goes up. It doesn't mean the bluff was profitable, it just means that you are continually sacrificing both your overall winrate and your blue-line to improve your red line. It pays to be passive (On occasion ;)) Often players go into games with the mantra that they want to be "aggressive", fire a lot of barrels, and really jump up their red-line. Against some players this strategy will work a charm. Against others - specifically players who either like to bluff too much, or call too much, it simply isn't the best strategy. Aggression is often good in poker, but in certain situations being passive is the correct option. Vs certain players the way you maximise your earnings is by playing with a falling red-line. You can arbitrarily try to increase your red-line but likely you will be sacrificing EV by doing it. You are literally shelling out dollars just for the luxury of having a cooler looking graph. Sure, maybe other posters will salivate over ...

GingerKid

Joined: 05.08.2007

Posts: 4,913

06.06.2014, 15:54 0

Hi, nice topic.

What should influence your decision in whether to sacrifice your blue line in exchange for a better red line? The value of red and blue lines is exactly equivalent. $1 in the red line is worth exactly $1 in the blue line.

Actually red and blue lines are in reality not equivalent because of the rake. When you bet and get called and win, you will pay more rake comparing to when you check. This means that if without rake, EV of bet will be the same as EV of check, then we should choose to check (blue line) because of the rake.

Imo, blue and red line should be indicator about player's style. If red is high, he is most likely agro player bluffing a lot. If it is low, he is not bluffing too much and calling tight. But doesn't mean that having positive red line is good or bad. E.g. when I play NL100 in zoom, players are overall very nitty and I play very aggressive bluffing a lot, so my winnings come from red line. If I play on party poker, people are very agro and don't like folding in general so I was making winnings from blue line and red line was negative.

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Kuschelbaer

Joined: 08.04.2006

Posts: 5,636

15.07.2017, 20:21 0

Good read!

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TakingAShot

Joined: 29.05.2017

Posts: 428

16.07.2017, 10:57 0

Originally posted by Kuschelbaer
Good read!

Everything Adam and Lemon36 produce is pure win. This is why I was basically offended when guys on RedChip were recommending BlackRain's material from 3+ years ago. What the guys on this site teach is years ahead of everything else out there for the micros and smalls. Go watch a few DeucesCracked videos. They're a joke now.

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Stazuke

Joined: 20.02.2009

Posts: 3

04.05.2018, 10:46 0

Very good post!

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Baracchinghi

Joined: 10.01.2011

Posts: 4,112

29.11.2019, 11:01 0

Originally posted by GingerKid
Hi, nice topic.

What should influence your decision in whether to sacrifice your blue line in exchange for a better red line? The value of red and blue lines is exactly equivalent. $1 in the red line is worth exactly $1 in the blue line.

If red is high, he is most likely agro player bluffing a lot. If it is low, he is not bluffing too much and calling tight.

I just would like point out that population tends to massively overfold in a lot of situations (or lines if you prefer).
It's not that we win with red line because we are crazy monkeys of course, we just exploit the average population tendencies (or villain's specific, if we have enough hands).
Think about the common situation where you have the opportunity to probe (or float) with a hand with little showdown value. It's true that you maybe could bring it to SD winning with blue line, but if population (or villain) folds anywhere near the BEFE you need and you stab, the gain is that you prevent him to realize his equity, plus you prevent him to bluff you out of the hands in future streets. Of course a lot of times you are turning to bluff the better hand, but it's the better hand NOW, you have one or two more streets to play.

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_Anonymous_

05.04.2020, 13:12 0

one of the best post I have ever read on theory

not even kidding

you cannot imagine, how drastically you helped me to improve my way of thinking about poker

I have been in this dirty game for years, but this is simply one of the most valuable information I have ever come across

words wont be enough here, but anyway - thank you :heart::heart:

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VorpalF2F

Super Moderator

Joined: 02.09.2010

Posts: 45,056

05.04.2020, 18:43 0

Originally posted by Viiiiiiiiiii
one of the best post I have ever read on theory

I agree -- which is why I refer people to it every time the "red line" topic comes up.

Even more amazing is that this thread is now over eight years old

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"The Red Line Myth" by w34z3l