So many clueless people bashing OP while they're wrong themselves in here...

Valuebetting thinner improves your red line, not your blue line. Proof:

$100 pot on the river, you vbet $100. You likely have the best hand and will win if you check, but it's somewhat hard to get called by worse. If you check, you'll win 90% of the time. If you get called, you have 51% equity. So there's value in a bet. However, if you check, you win $90 on average, increasing your blue line by $40 since $50 came from your own stack, and your red line stays flat. But if you valuebet correctly and get called, you win $153 on average, $150 coming from your stack, so your blue line only increases by $3 instead of $40. Villain will fold ~80% though so your red line will increase by ~$40 (it increases with $50 when he folds, which he does 80% of the time). So the thin vbet earned us $3, but decreased our blue line by $37 and increased our red line by $40.

And from a game theoretical point of view, by having thinner vbets in your range you can also bluff more often.

Calling lighter on the river improves your red line. Proof:

Imagine what happens to your red line if you had folded instead... Pretty simple. By making a neutral EV river call instead of a fold (same EV), your blue line will take the hit instead of the red line. Green line stays the same. So if you're priced in by a tiny bit and you recognize this because you're a good player while a lesser player wouldn't have seen it, you can increase your winrate by calling a river bet correctly instead of folding, improving your red line.


None of this matters though. It's about the green line. Just make the best decision in every spot. Making better decisions usually involves making better valuebets, bluffs and calls, which typically will improve your red line. Whether the red line ends up being higher than the blue line is completely irrelevant and what a graph resulting from perfect play should look like depends on the way your opponents play.

I think you can get a sweet red line by shoving every hand. Your blue line might suffer a bit but aggression is rewarded in poker right?

Can't be bothered to correct everything but here's a glaring contradiction in your thought process:



Aaaaand the rest of your analysis for that hand sucks anyway because unless the other player is a braindead moron he'll realise there's absolutely no point for utg to be checkraising ANY value hands and will just call down with like 88

@ grindcore

If value betting thinner allows us to bluff more, wouldn't that in turn mean we can't value bet as thin?

No, the more you bluff the thinner you can valuebet. If your opponent has a bluffcatcher and you bet river, he's getting certain pot odds. For example, if we pot bet, he needs to win 1/3 times when he calls. If we valuebet 20 combos, we can bluff 10 combos. If we valuebet an additional 4 thin combos, we can now also add 2 additional bluffing combos to our betting range as 20:10 = 24:12. If we would not valuebet thinner but only increase our bluffing frequency, we'd be 20:12 which means villain can start making profitable calls against us.

Good point.

I'm with Grindcore here. I really like OP's post. Enough that I've bookmarked it to read again. When someone takes the time to write a good post I'm more than willing to look over parts I may initially disagree with.
Now after thinking on it for a bit I may add my 2 cents, but that would be more leaning to expanding on OP's post.

Yeah although there are some poor examples in the post I really liked it. Was surprised to see the first reply imply that it might be a level.

[QUOTE=LazyAce;33882390]Ya sure, everybody already knows that making lots of good river calls is good, and that making few bad river calls is bad. Unfortunately, you listed it river call efficiency as one of the three ways to improve your redline, in your OP but just admit in the above paragraph that it does not effect the redline at all. It does of course effect your blueline [QUOTE]


If a guy bluffs, you fold, you have lost a pot and have a negative redline.
If a guy bluffs, you call, instead of having a negative redline you either have a positive or negative blue one.

Therfore, Of course good river calls improve redline simply because if you continually call (correctly or incorrectly) then you cant lose money without showdown

....Right?

Anyone is having a positive redline nowadays at 6max games NL 50 and above?? I would be really curious to see that.

Isn't it a kind of zero-sum game, omitting the rake, as if one is losing it before the showdown the other guy is winning it?

Agreed. I believe a MJAOR contributor to blueline vs redline is how willing you are to pot control river vs making a thin bet.


Congratulations on recognizing that poker is a zero-sum game before rake.

IMHO, post sounds quite bias, and I admit I have no idea if you're a blueline or redline guy, or even a greenline guy.

By this example, to me, you're not describing the difference between redline and blueline, you're describing the difference between a worse player (level 2) vs a better player (level 3+).

You said it yourself [what I think you implied]: "A blue line guy will often cbet [without much thinking; autopilot]."

While this is how you patronize the redline guy: ""With his bet, he is saying he has a good hand but with a pocket pair he would probably bet less. He didn't have a good hand preflop (else he would have 3-bet) but now he's representing a good hand so it is either 66 or Jx. There aren't many combos of Jx or 66. Is this player capable of bluffing? This is important because some players just never bluff. Yes, he is." the red line guy raises to 20bb and button folds."
Notice the much more advanced and well thought out decision model the redliner has compared to the clueless blueliner multitabling on auto-pilot.

But wait, here comes the best part: The cherry on top is when you carry on to irrelevantly describe how the villain how villain responds! LOLL! Contrast: "the red line guy raises to 20bb and button folds. [aka. successful bluff]" with "button will likely flat the [s]cbet[/s] [incompetent blueline guy] with his whole range [aka. failed bluff]"

Sounds like you're just another redline worshipper or you equate the colors blue and red with average and pro respectively.

This is what I think:
Given two players with equal winrates, ie 4bb/100. Player B is a "blueline guy"; "Player R is a redline guy".
There difference in not in their poker fundamentals nor their card playing or hand reading abilities. Their skill levels are IDENTICAL by virtue their winrate is IDENTICALl!!! No sane poker player will sacrifice their winrate to trade colors over the term long.

The difference lies in whether you want to win by showing down strength or making them fold instead by betting thinner, ie. thinner/dark-tunnel river bets. By making these dark tunnel bets, they are simply transferring wins and loses from blueline to redline, ie. when you have better hand, they fold: +EV to redline instead of blueline and vice versa. That's it. Redliners may make bluffs or "plays" not because they are better poker players or can read "better" per say. They bluff more because that is their style and their success rate will be no greater than a blueliner with equal skill, proven by their similar winrates.

I apologize in advanced and I rarely say something like this to OP outside of BBV but ... OP ur clearly FOS.

Jeez, seems I responded to an ancient OP that was bumped.

Silly me