The Redline Secrets of Nosebleed Crushers

Discover how crushers achieve a better redline than their peers, and why that matters to YOUR winrate

I've written a few times about redline, including here in this newsletter. In 2024 I wrote the post How To Fix Your Tanking Redline (which you can read here once you finish with today's post). I also published a video for my YouTube channel in 2023 titled 3 Reasons Why Your Redline Sucks (And How To Fix It), not to mention several Play & Explain videos where I discuss this topic.

I keep coming back to this because it matters. And it matters a lot.

Take a look at these 2 graphs from the last Cash Game World Championship, hosted at the 10KNL Tables on CoinPoker in November/December 2025:

The first graph belongs to the combined alias of the Top 4 players of that edition of the Championship: Biluzin (the winner and a player/coach of my stable Metagame), PR0DIGY (Own Messere, 2nd place), TaxHere (Kevin Paque, 3rd place) and DavyJones (Roberto Pérez, 4th place). Together, these 4 players won $1.2M reg battling in an all-pro field at the highest level.

The second graph belongs to everyone else who participated in the challenge. World class players too, for the record. That being said, they netted $1.2M in losses, as poker is a zero-sum game and there was no rake charged on these hands. And when you look at it, what catches the most attention is the incredible difference in non showdown winnings: while the Top 4 crushers managed to win 1.8 bb/100 without showing their cards, the mere mortals lost 3.4 bb/100 instead.

This is huge. And it doesn't happen just at nosebleeds.

On GGPoker Mid and Low stakes games, while the Pre-rakeback winners have an average 1.7 bb/100 total winrate (filtered only for players with sample size > 300k hands) with a losing -9.8 bb/100 redline, the pre-rakeback losers have a -2.9 bb/100 winrate, with a -13 bb/100 losing redline. This means that 69.5% of their winrate difference comes from the redline (3.1 bb/100 out of the 4.6bb/100 total difference).

Once we understand that redline has a very strong correlation with winrate, the immediate and most enticing question becomes: how? We need to take this evidence and find out what it is that the big winners are doing that leads to them winning more pots without showdown and, as a consequence, more money than everyone else.

THE INVESTIGATION

Trying to answer how redline impacts profitability takes some serious digging, because on the surface, everything looks the same.

Take a look at the screenshots below. They come from my Database Review popup on H2N, showing the stats of the Top 4 Nosebleed players, and the remaining players of the challenge:

Top 4 Players - Overall Postflop Stats

Remaining Players - Overall Postflop Stats

Do you see the huge discrepancies? Yeah, me neither.

The macro stats all look very, very close. Sure, 1-2% differences here and there, but nothing crazy. Nothing that stands out too much; nothing that could immediately give us the answers we are looking for. And this hides a major insight for us in poker: edges live in the small details.

If 2 groups of regulars can have such incredibly similar macro stats and yet very different results (and very different redlines), then we must conclude that what really drives their winrate difference cannot be captured by the macro stats. This reveals why improving in poker can be so hard at times: you could be doing everything right 98% of the time, have super good looking stats resembling great players, and then if your performance is suboptimal in the remaining 2% of hands, you could end up with very poor results, even though your stats are telling you that you're playing well.

So how can we get past the macro stats and the superficial analysis, and head into something that could in fact give us some answers?

The way I like to do this when studying with data is to isolate scenarios.

If Group A is overperforming Group B on average, we must break the game down into pieces and compare the groups' performances within those smaller pieces. If we break it into a smaller piece that still doesn't reveal a big discrepancy, we keep digging and breaking into different/smaller parts, until we find a big enough difference worth studying in more detail.

That's what I did for these 2 groups of players in the World Championship sample.

The first thing I like to take a look at, when the context is redline, is the redline per position (and EV bb/100 winrate per position as well). And here things already pointed to something. Take a look at the print below:

For each position at the table, we took note of the 2 groups' redline winrate and overall winrate. Then we computed the relative difference between them. Amongst the 6 possible positions, the biggest differences could be found in the blinds and UTG. When looking at the BTN, the most profitable position in the game, the non-top4 players only had an 11% worse redline, with a 13% worse EV for that position. Now look at the performance of the SB - a 50% worse redline, with a -268% performance in EV. The big blind also looks terrible - a 26% worse redline with a lossrate twice as big.

This was already very insightful for me. What does UTG and Blinds have in common? Take a moment to think about this. Let's see if your intuition is sharp.

What they have in common is very simple: they are seats we play very often out of position.

With this insight, I decided to dig deeper into redline and overall EV winrates for specific postflop scenarios - 3bet pot out of position, single raised pot in position, and so on. The results strengthened our hypothesis:

I filtered for the top 5 spots that will matter most to a player's winrate, and again took notes of redline and overall EV. The results are somewhat shocking: almost all of the difference comes from OOP spots. In fact, the non-top4 players actually outperformed the top 4 in the most common postflop scenario in poker - Single raised pots in position as PFR. Their results were better in both redline and overall EV. In 3bet pots in position we even saw these players with a better redline than the top 4.

But then, when we look at OOP spots, the difference is remarkable - redlines plummeting for the non top 4, and with them, their winrates.

To further crystallize the hypothesis, I decided to run a very simple filter. If the problem is OOP play, then if I set a filter for 'saw flop OOP', it should show a huge relative deviation between the 2 groups, while 'saw flop IP' should show a much smaller, more modest difference. So I ran the filters - and that's exactly what they showed:

The secret of the best players in the world for how to win more pots (and more money) lies in how they play out of position.

"Oh wow Saulo, given that there are only 2 options - IP or OOP - this doesn't sound super telling". I bet that's what you're thinking right now. And if you are, then you're right - but also wrong.

On one hand, you can argue that this is one of only 3 possibilities - they could be better at playing both IP and OOP, only OOP, or only IP. And that's correct. They are making more money after all, so they gotta do better in at least one of the 2 possible scenarios. Therefore, it's not something out of this world.

The problem here is the magnitude of the difference. The difference is so, so big, that it teaches us something really important about poker: if you want to generate edge over your opponents, you need to outplay them where it really matters.

Outplaying your opponents when in position is not very difficult. You have an information advantage. That's why playing in position is so profitable to begin with - your opponent has to act first, and by acting first he reveals information about his range. With an asymmetry in the available information, you can make better decisions than your opponent, and thus make more money. This is a natural consequence of the structure of the game, and thus it levels the playing field. It's easy for everyone to make money in position.

It's out of position that edges can really surface. Now you are working on the bad side of the asymmetry - your opponent has the information advantage, and you have to figure out how to deal with that. The players most skilled at these scenarios will make the most money.

Okay, we're getting closer. But we need to dig a little more.

The next thing I like to isolate when doing analysis is performance by pot size. Pot size can really tell us where exactly the difference is coming from: does it come from winning most of the small pots that most people don't care about? Does it come from huge bluffs in big pots? Or does it come from taking a stand and bluffcatching correctly in medium pots?

So I went into the database and ran 3 filters, for the scenario we already isolated (saw flop OOP): small pots (under 15 bbs), medium pots (between 15 and 45 bbs) and big pots (over 45 bbs). The results are insane once again:

Pretty much all of the difference comes from big pots. While the non top players are losing a ton in big pots out of position, the top players are absolutely crushing them. Take a look at the graphs comparing the two:

Top 4 - Big Pots OOP Winnings Graph

All But Top 4 - Big Pots OOP Winnings Graph

The fact that the big discrepancies are isolated, instead of being spread out in multiple spots and pot sizes, and being disproportional in big pots, points in the direction of edges being a function of precise execution under pressure.

Can you still play well when everything is against you? When you have information disadvantage, the pot is big and one unique decision can cost dozens, if not hundreds of big blinds, can you still play good poker? Or better yet, in these circumstances, are you even capable of outplaying your opponent at all?

Not a huge surprise for me that this is the circumstance that actually makes the difference to results. I've studied the impact of infrequent-but-large mistakes multiple times throughout my career as a coach, and the results always point to the same direction: making big mistakes in big pots can completely destroy your winrate.

For example, imagine that once every 2500 hands - which is essentially once a day for a pro-level volume - you make a losing river call in a big pot. Let's say the pot is 80 big blinds, opponent bets 60 big blinds - a typical all-in bet setup for 100bbs effective stacks. You are getting 30% pot odds, so if villain is bluffing 30% of the time, your call breaks even in the long run. Now imagine your opponent doesn't find the proper amount of bluffs, and is in practice only bluffing that spot 10% of the time. How many big blinds are you losing with your call in the long run?

EV(Call) = Equity x (Pot + Bet) - (1- Equity) x Bet. EV(Call) = 0.1 x 140 - 0.9 x 60 = 14 - 54 = -40bbs

You just lost 40bbs in a single call.

Let's imagine that, apart from these once-a-day terrible calls, you actually play great poker, and your expected value in the remaining 2499 hands is 4bb/100. How much does this single losing call, once a day, reduce your (otherwise amazing) winrate?

2499 * 4 / 100 = 99.96 big blinds of expected value.

99.96 - 40 = 59.96 over 2500 hands = 2.4 bb/100.

You just lost 40% of your winrate, a full 1.6 bb/100 worth of winrate, from a single bad call on the river. Let that sink in for a moment.

How many bad calls do you make in a day of grind? How many bad bluffs? How many clear missed value spots?

I wish you only made one big blunder per day. The reality is that you probably make 3 or 4. And if that's the case, it becomes impossible to have a decent winrate, even if you do everything right in the other 2497 hands. That's 0.16% of your volume being responsible for most of your winrate.

This is the unforgiving and yet beautiful part of this game we love: all of your efforts to be a winning player can be put to waste in 3 or 4 hands a day. At the same time, these same 3 or 4 hands can completely transform your trajectory and your results.

Developing a crushing redline - and thus a better winrate - depends on you finding that thin value bet on the river that 98% of people won't find, or that check-raise on the turn that only happens 4% of the time in theory and no one bothers to do, or that huge all-in check raise bluff in a spot where everyone else check-raises 4x. If you find yourself only making plays in big pots that every other regular would find, then the chances you will belong to the top of the field are low. But if you start looking at the game with the understanding that 3 or 4 hands a day can completely change your results, then you'll be much more likely to try new things and become a more fearless player at the tables.

We don't have more time for it in today's post, but next week I want to dig deep into one of the hands from the World Championship that can really demonstrate why being fearless in big pots OOP is the key you've been missing to unlock the next level for your game. If you'd like me to do that, reply to this email with a "Yes, let's do this" and I'll bring my A-game to our next breakdown.

Thank you for reading, my friend! See you next Monday.

Saulo