The button marks who is nominally dealing and rotates one seat clockwise each hand so the positional advantage is shared evenly.
It is the most profitable seat at the table by a wide margin, because it acts last after the flop, turn and river. Most winning players' entire profit comes from the button and the seat to its right.
Preflop is the exception: the blinds act after the button, which is what makes stealing them a distinct strategic idea rather than a free roll.
One convention that catches new players: when a player is eliminated or a table breaks, the button does not always move a single seat. Rooms use a dead button rule so nobody skips paying blinds, which can leave the button on an empty seat for a hand. It looks like an error and is not.
Where the numbers come from
Related terms in poker
- Pot odds — The price a call is getting, compared against how often it needs to win.
- Outs — The cards remaining that would improve your hand to a likely winner.
- Equity — Your share of the pot, meaning how often you win it if the hand plays to showdown.
- Implied odds — The money you expect to win later if your draw comes in, beyond what is in the pot now.
- Position — Where you act in the betting order, and the largest structural edge in poker.
- Cutoff — The seat immediately to the right of the button.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.