1. Poker Button Strategy
2. Dealer Button Poker
3. Poker Button Position

Buttons can make poker easier to play, especially for beginners. In many poker games, buttons help denote certain players' functions. For example, the dealer may have a button that says 'dealer' if the position rotates throughout the duration of the game. The actual button placed in front of the “dealer” that moves clockwise each hand, indicating where the dealer, or last person to act, would be in games that use a professional dealer. Button (or on-the-button) is also used to describe the dealer position in each hand. Example: “Gary raised to 7 Under The Gun (UTG) and the action folded to.

Learn to Play Poker in no time: Our poker tutorial is a great way to learn the card. Poker table position diagram. You win more money from later positions than you do from early positions. The player on the button acts last, making the button the most profitable position (over the long run). The seats in Red are early position; The seats in Blue are middle position; The seats in Green are late position; Early position.

In poker, the buck or dealer button is a marker used to indicate the player who is dealing or, in casino games with a house dealer, the player who acts last on that deal (who would be the dealer in a home game). The term button is also used for a variety of plastic discs, or lammers, used by casinos to mark the status of players.

History[edit]

When poker became a popular saloon game in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century, the integrity of the players was unreliable and the honor codes that had regulated gambling for centuries became inadequate. Because the dealer has the greatest opportunity to cheat (by manipulating the specific cards that players receive, or by inspecting the dealt cards), the players would take turns in this role. To avoid arguments about whose turn it was to deal, the person who was next due to deal would be given a marker. This marker moves clockwise around the table after each hand. A knife was commonly used as a marker, and the marker became generally known as a 'buck', as an abbreviated reference to the buck's horn that formed the handle of many knives at that time.

When the dealer had finished dealing the cards he 'passed the buck'. According to Martin, the earliest use of the phrase in print is in the July 1865 edition of Weekly New Mexican: 'They draw at the commissary, and at poker after they have passed the buck.' The phrase then appears frequently in many sources so it probably originated at about this time. However, Mark Twain cited it as common slang in Virginia City when he was a reporter there in 1862.^[1]

'Passing the buck' soon became a metaphor for dodging responsibility. U.S. President Harry S. Truman was noted for a sign in his office reading 'The buck stops here.' It was a gift from^{[citation needed]} Fred Canfil, who found a similar sign in the warden's office at the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma.

The use of other small disks as such markers led to the alternative term 'button'. Silver dollars were later used as markers and it has been suggested that this is the origin of 'buck' as a slang term for 'dollar,' though by no means is there universal agreement on this subject. The marker is also referred to as 'the hat'. The origin of this term is believed to stem from the wearing of a hat having been used to denote dealership.

Dealer button[edit]

Today, a dealer button is typically a white plastic disc with the word 'Dealer' on each side. While in most home games, the player holding the dealer button deals the cards, in a casino or cardroom, an employee handles this responsibility.

The dealer button is sometimes modified to indicate a secondary detail about the hand being played—for example, a kill game may use a button with the word 'Kill' on one side to show that the current hand is a kill pot, and turn the 'Dealer' side up to show that the kill is off, or a dealer's choice game might replace the dealer button with a placard indicating the chosen game.

The term 'button' is often used to refer to the dealer position, which is the position whose turn to bet comes last. Being 'on the button' is therefore the most advantageous and most profitable position in poker.

Other buttons[edit]

In casino and card room cash games, the dealer's well may contain an assortment of laminated discs that the dealer may place in front of a player's seat under certain conditions. Properly called lammers (rhymes with 'spammers'), but also referred to as buttons, they are separate from and used differently from a Dealer Button.

The following table lists the most common lammers and their significance:

See also[edit]

References[edit]

• Martin, Garry. 'Pass the buck', The Phrase Finder Retrieved May 13, 2005

The button is the most profitable position to play from in poker. It gives you the advantage of position, which is huge. If you keep meticulous records or use a poker tracking program, you have probably already noticed that the button is where you make most of your money in poker.

The greatest advantage of acting from the button is that you get to see what your opponents do before you have to act. This gives you a surplus of information that opponents in earlier positions do not have at the time of action. By virtue of your having more information than your opponents, you’ve got a huge advantage and can manipulate the way the hand plays.

There are three basic rules you should follow in order to maximize your profit from the button:

• Maintain an open range preflop
• Practice aggression
• Punish poor players

Maintain an Open Range Preflop

That might sound complicated, but all it really means is this: play lots of hands.

You should play much looser from the button than you do in other positions. Where in the big blind it’s profitable to play about 10-15% of your hands, on the button that number becomes 30-40%–possibly even higher depending on the game you’re in.

The logic behind this is that since you’re in control of the betting action, your relative hand value goes up; since you’re last to act postflop, you give away no information in terms of betting patterns. Since your opponents will have to guess what you’re holding on every street before they act, they will tend to play more conservatively. That means you can abuse them regardless of whether or not you actually make your hands.

Poker Button Strategy

Your range on the button should look something like this:

Dealer Button Poker

• 22+
• All suited Kings, all suited Queens
• J8s+
• Suited two gappers 96+
• Suited gappers 86+
• Suited connectors 34+
• A8o+
• K9o,Q9o,J9o,T9o+

Of course, this range will vary depending on the situation and on how comfortable you are playing the button generally. But the main point here is that you should play lots of cards from this position.

Practice Aggression

Playing a wide range of hands is only going to work as long as you keep up the aggression. What do I mean by this? Simple: bet, bet, and then bet some more.

Don’t flat-call when there is an opportunity to raise, and punish the opponents who do limp. The only time I would recommend limping in to unraised pots from the button is when you have a small, drawing hand and want to play a large, multi-way pot. In most cases, though, you are best served by raising it up and playing your hand hard.

Why play so aggressively? Because you want to encourage your opponents to make mistakes. There are tons of mistakes you can induce through aggression: causing opponents to draw without odds, causing opponents to call light, and inducing tilt are just a few examples.

It’s so easy to induce mistakes from your opponents in late position because they never know what you’re going to do. Their lack of information is your profit. At the same time, aggression gives you more ways to win the pot. With the right amount of aggression, you can win pots by either hitting legitimate hands or simply by betting everyone out of the pot.

Imagine a player in middle position holding a marginal hand like ATo. He wants to try and get lucky, but he doesn’t know quite how far he should take it. Thus you’ll often be able to extract two streets of value by betting, while he calls (unprofitably) waiting for a lucky strike.

Punish Poor Players

Aggression ties in with the notion of punishment: you want bad players to pay for their badness. There are all sorts of players you want to harass from the button, but the most common is the limper.

The limper loves to flat-call preflop raises with crappy hands. Often these guys are calling stations. A limper’s goal is to see as many cards as possible while paying the least amount of money to do so. Thus your goal on the button is to charge these players as much as possible to draw, punishing them for playing crappy poker.

After a few orbits at a table, you’ll get to know who the limpers are. You should aim to play pots with these guys alone when you’ve got position. Since their range is weighted towards marginal and straight up bad hands, you will often be ahead to start; and whatever advantage you lack in hand strength you will make up for by knowing how to win via aggressive play.

Poker Button Position

Make sure you practice a little caution when punishing poor players. If you find yourself up against a true calling station, you do not want to bluff. Against weak players, your best bet is to put in a preflop raise with any hand that beats their likely calling range. Then play a straightforward game after the flop. This prevents you from wasting money by bluffing unbluffable players. It also extracts the most money when you have legitimate hands.