How to Increase Your Win Rate on the Button: Preflop Strategies

The Button is the most advantageous position in poker. Playing on the Button, you always act last, giving you a positional advantage over your opponents. In this article, we will discuss several key preflop strategies to help you increase your win rate on the Button.

Table of Contents:

- Stealing the Blinds

- Attacking the Cutoff with 3-Bets

- Isolating Limpers

- Slow Playing Monsters When a Fish is on the Blinds

Stealing the Blinds

One of the biggest privileges of playing on the Button is the opportunity to steal the blinds profitably. When all players fold to you, you can make a raise to take the small and big blinds. This is especially effective against passive players who rarely enter the pot without a strong hand.

On the Button, you can open-raise with a much wider range than from other positions, as there are only two opponents left to act behind you. The likelihood that one of them has a strong hand is significantly lower compared to when you are in early positions.

A good range for open-raising from the Button can include all pocket pairs, suited aces and kings, suited connectors, and high off-suit hands.

The size of the raise should not be too large. Usually, a raise of 2.5-3 big blinds is sufficient to effectively steal the blinds. This size maintains pressure on opponents while minimizing your losses if someone decides to defend their blind by calling or 3-betting.

When attempting to steal the blinds, it’s important to adapt to your opponents and pay attention to the type of players behind you and their statistics. If the blinds are loose players, you can narrow your range and increase the size of your raise with strong hands. Against tight players, you can continue stealing the blinds with a wide range.

For example, on the Button, we are dealt 43 suited and both opponents in the blinds are very tight players with stats of VPIP 15% and 17% respectively. Despite having a relatively weak hand, this is a good situation to attempt a blind steal by making an open raise.

Most often, we will take the pot preflop without a fight. Even if one of the opponents decides to defend their blind, sometimes we will hit the flop. Additionally, we will have the opportunity to continue our aggression on the flop and take the pot with a bluff.

Attacking the Cutoff with 3-Bets

The Cutoff is the position immediately before the Button. Players on the Cutoff usually open-raise with a wider range than from early positions, providing you with an excellent opportunity to actively use 3-bets to increase your win rate.

For 3-betting against open raises from the Cutoff, you don’t necessarily need a very strong hand. Since you are playing in position, it is beneficial to expand your 3-bet range to include medium-strength hands, such as 88, KQo, JTs, and so on.

For bluff 3-bets, speculative hands like A5s, K9s, and 87s are good choices, as they can connect with the flop if the opponent calls your 3-bet.

The size of the 3-bet should be sufficient to make the opponent make a difficult decision, but not so large as to risk too much money. Typically, a 3-bet that is 2.5-3 times the size of the original raise is optimal.

It is also important to consider the playing style of the opponent on the Cutoff. If you notice that the player often folds to 3-bets, you can increase the number of bluffs in your range. If they frequently call or 4-bet, choose stronger hands and avoid unnecessary bluffs.

In the preflop matrix, I selected the following hands:

Next, in the Hand2Note 4 reports, I filtered situations where I 3-bet from the Button with any of these hands, facing an open raise from a player in the Cutoff:

According to the Action Profit indicator, a 3-bet yields an average of 1.2 big blinds in each such situation. Notably, calling with these hands does not yield any profit in the long run. This indicates that playing in position with medium-strength and marginal hands, it is much more profitable to stick to an aggressive 3-bet strategy.

Isolating Limpers

Limpers are weak players who want to see the flop as cheaply as possible with almost any hand. Limping often indicates weakness, and isolating such players with a raise is a very profitable strategy.

To isolate limpers from the Button, you can use a wide range of hands. The weaker the player, the more often you should isolate them.

The size of the isolating raise should be slightly larger than a standard raise, typically 3-4 big blinds plus 1 big blind for each additional limper. This reduces the number of players in the pot, increasing your chances of winning.

If the limper calls your raise, you can use your positional advantage to put pressure on them postflop. Most limpers often fold to continuation bets if the flop does not help them, allowing you to take many pots with a bluff.

In Hand2Note 4 reports, I filtered situations where I isolated limpers from the Button and then made a continuation bet on the flop:

In this scenario, opponents fold to the flop c-bet 51% of the time. Mathematically, this is frequent enough for an aggressive strategy to be profitable in the long run.

Slow Playing Monsters When a Fish is on the Blinds

The main profit in poker comes from fish, and you should aim to play as many pots with them as possible. When a regular player opens with a raise and a fish is in the blinds, you can simply call the raise instead of 3-betting with a monster hand, applying a slow play strategy.

If you make a standard 3-bet, the fish behind you is likely to fold. However, if you just call, they will often join the pot as well.

Slow playing is suitable only for the strongest hands, such as pocket aces or kings. These hands are strong enough that you can afford to play them slowly, allowing your opponents to invest more money in the pot.

When you set a trap, your main expectation is that the fish will often enter the pot with a weak hand and continue to invest money postflop. This way, slow playing against the fish allows you to maximize profit from their mistakes and win a big pot.

We are on the Button with pocket kings, and a regular player opens with a raise from the Middle Position. Normally, I would always play kings with a 3-bet, but there is a fish with a VPIP of 67% on the Big Blind behind us.

This is a good situation to apply a slow play and just call with our monster to invite the fish into the pot and then extract more money from them postflop.

Playing on the Button provides you with a significant strategic advantage over your opponents, allowing you to control the dynamics of the hand and make more informed decisions.

Using Hand2Note 4 statistics will help you quickly identify the types of opponents at the table, maximize your positional advantage, and increase your win rate on the Button.