Red Line Poker: What Your Non-Showdown Winnings Actually Mean
Every guide on this subject tells you what to change. None of them tell you whether anything is wrong. Most red lines fall, most of that fall is arithmetic, and the advice to bluff more has cost a lot of players a lot of money.
The four lines on the graph
Open any tracker and you get a graph with several lines on it. Most players read the green one and ignore the rest.
| Line | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Green | Everything you won and lost. The only one that pays your rent |
| Blue | Money won in pots that reached showdown |
| Red | Money won in pots that ended before showdown, and every blind you posted and folded |
| Orange | The green line with the luck of all-ins taken out |
Blue and red always add up to green. So a falling red line and a rising green line at the same time is perfectly ordinary. It means your money comes from showdowns.
Why your red line falls, before you do anything wrong
Here's the part almost every article leaves out. A large chunk of your red line is decided by the blinds, and you never made a decision about it.
Work it through at a six-handed table.
| Per 100 hands | |
|---|---|
| Hands you're in a blind | About 33 |
| Small blinds posted, at 0.5bb | About 17 |
| Big blinds posted, at 1bb | About 17 |
| Total posted | About 25bb |
Now fold some of them, which you will. Fold the small blind seven times in ten and the big blind four times in ten, and you've handed over roughly twelve big blinds per hundred hands. All of it lands on the red line. You haven't misplayed anything. You folded 72 offsuit in the small blind, which is correct.
Play more hands from the blinds and the number gets worse, because the fold rate is what drives it. Play a tighter game and it gets worse still.
So the question isn't whether your red line falls. It's whether it falls faster than the arithmetic explains.
Four checks, in the order that matters
If your red line is dropping much harder than that, something is leaking. Run these on your own hands in the order given, because the first failure is usually the real one, and it's almost never the river.
Check one. Before the flop. Filter to hands where you were in the big blind facing a single raise. How often did you fold? Above about 70 percent against a button open, and you're giving away pots for free every orbit. Then look at your 3-bet percentage. Under about 6 percent means you're letting openers take the pot unchallenged.
This is where most falling red lines begin, and it's the cheapest thing on this list to change.
Check two. On the flop. Filter to hands where you faced a bet of half the pot or smaller. If you're folding more than about half of those, you're folding the cheapest pots in the game. Now check how often you raised instead of calling. Small bets deserve more raises than most players give them, because a small bet is a wide range and it folds a lot.
Check three. The turn. Count how often you bet the turn after betting the flop. Below about 40 percent and you're giving up on pots you started, which hands the initiative to someone who was ready to fold.
Check four. The river, and not the way you expect. This one comes from Patrick Howard of Mobius Poker, and it's the sharpest idea in the literature on this subject. When you check back the river in position, you should be winning the pot somewhere around 45 to 50 percent of the time.
If you're winning far more than that, you're checking back hands that should have been value bets. Those pots still come to you, so your green line looks fine. They just arrive at showdown, which puts them on the blue line instead of the red one. Your red line isn't suffering from too few bluffs. It's suffering from too few bets.
When a falling red line isn't a leak at all
Four situations where the number is telling you nothing.
- You play a lot of hands from the blinds. More blinds posted means more posted-and-folded money. Covered above, and it's the most common explanation by a distance.
- Your sample is small. Under about 20,000 hands the red line swings around too much to read. One big pot won with a river bluff moves it visibly.
- Your opponents never fold. Against players who call everything, a falling red line is what correct play produces. Bluffing them to fix the graph is how a good red line becomes a bad green one.
- You play a showdown-heavy style on purpose. Some winning players get their money almost entirely from value betting. Their red lines look terrible and their bank balances don't.
The mistake to avoid
Don't set out to fix the red line. Set out to find the leak the red line is pointing at.
A solver playing another solver has a falling red line, because balanced play doesn't win many pots without a showdown. So a rising red line isn't proof you're playing well. It's usually proof your opponents fold too much, which is a fact about them.
What a steeply falling red line usually means is that you fold in spots where your opponents aren't punishing you for it. Check one and check two find that. The river is where the advice goes and the flop is where the money is.
What to do next
Work down the four checks in order and stop at the first one that fails. Fix that, give it a few thousand hands, then look again.
You'll need your hand histories to run any of it. If you haven't got them off your poker site yet, start there. For the stat that most often fails alongside a bad red line, see WTSD.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the red line in poker?
It's the line on your tracker's graph showing money won in pots that never reached showdown. Bets that took the pot down, plus every blind you posted and folded. The blue line is the opposite, money won when cards were turned over, and the two add up to your green line.
Is a falling red line bad?
Usually not. Almost everyone's falls, including winning players and including solvers playing each other. The blinds alone drag it down by roughly ten big blinds per hundred hands before you've made a single decision. What's worth investigating is a red line falling much faster than that.
What is a good red line?
There's no single figure, because it depends on your table size and how many hands you play from the blinds. Compare it with your own green line instead of with zero. If your green line is healthy, your red line is doing its job whatever it looks like.
Should I bluff more to fix my red line?
It's the most common advice and the most commonly wrong. Bluffing into opponents who don't fold turns a bad red line into a bad green line, and the green line is the one that pays. Fix the folding before you touch the bluffing.
Why does my red line fall even when I'm winning?
Posted blinds. You're in a blind a third of the time at a six-handed table, you fold most of them, and every one of those folds is a small loss that lands on the red line. That's arithmetic rather than a mistake.
Can I see my red line without PokerTracker or Hold'em Manager?
Yes. Any tracker that reads your hand history files can draw it, including web-based ones with nothing to install. You need the hand history files themselves first, which your poker site writes or exports.
Does a solver have a positive red line?
No, and this is the detail that reframes the whole subject. Two solvers playing each other produce falling red lines, because balanced play doesn't win many pots uncontested. A rising red line is a sign your opponents fold too much, not a sign you're playing well.