Win the Button tournament rules?

Question

As I studied(in google) about win the button tournament I just find out that, it is like as normal tournament where winner get the button. Is there any other rule, which I need to other than that? And in case of split pot, player who is closest to dealer from left will get the button, though player next to dealer (right) win the pot also. And what if split pot winner is one of the dealer, in that case do we need to move the button or not? As per me we dont need to move, but dont know about the poker industry standard.

Answer 1

It is custom betting so there is not (yet) a standard.

Basically win the pot wins the button. You will need to defer to house / casino rules.

If you are to the left by 1 or 2 positions of a big stack dominating the table you could get killed on blinds.

A small pot is no longer just a small pot as the button comes with it.

It messes with pay a bb or wait for the bb to sit. So would not work for cash games.

It could be abused in just fold to a single bet to put certain players in the blinds.

Say you are in the BB and it folds to the button and they bet huge. If you fold you not only lose your BB but you are still in the BB so you would need to defend with almost any two cards.

Answer 2

This sounds very wrong.

In all tournaments (both on-line and live) that I've encountered the button moves clockwise around the table after each hand, usually to the small blind from the previous hand. The only usual exception to this is towards the end of a tournament when you go from three to two players, the same player may have the button for two hands in a row because a player can't be big blind for two consecutive hands.

There are two ways of dealing with the situation when the small blind on the previous hand was knocked out of the tournament.

• Put the button in the "hole", treating it as though there was a player sat in the vacant seat - which ensures that all players pay the correct blinds for each orbit. This is more common in brick & mortar venues.
• Advance the button clockwise to the next live player - which has the downside of allowing players to skip either the small or big blind for that orbit. This is more common in on-line games.

Answer 3

Unfortunately your question is not very clear, but if I'm understanding what you're asking:

When playing a Win The Button (WTB) tournament, are there any rules in addition to those for a regular NLHE tournament which I need to be aware of, besides the fact that the button will be awarded to the winner of the previous hand?

No, unless you are playing a tournament with additional modifications, being a WTB tournament means exactly that, the only change is that the button for the next hand is awarded to the winner of the current hand.

When there is a split pot in a WTB tournament, I understand that the player closest to the left of the current button will be awarded the button - what happens when once of the players splitting the pot is already the button? Do they retain the button, or is it awarded to the player closest to the left of the current button (excluding the player who had the button in the current hand)?

I've not been able to find any conclusive details on this, but the wording I keep coming across is along the lines of:

"In the case of a split pot, the button moves to the winning player closest to the left of the existing button."

My interpretation of this would be that in a split pot situation, the existing button owner does not retain the button, but this is open to debate if based only on the text above. I've not played one of these tournaments on PokerStars or elsewhere to see whether this situation arises, but it would be relatively rare in any case.

If you're asking because you want to run your own WTB tournament, just pick one way or the other and be consistent - for what it's worth, I would have it so the button owner does not retain the button in a split pot situation, to slightly reduce the amount of domination of the button which occurs.