Poker News

PokerStars announced today that it has added a number of “Win the Button” tournaments to its schedule, building on the success of this poker tournament variation in the online poker room’s sponsored live events.

The Win the Button format has appeared now and again online, but has generally just been one of those one-off, fun, gimmicky types of games. The name of the game is an accurate descriptor: in Win the Button events, whoever wins the hand is automatically put in the dealer’s position – the button – for the next hand. As most of our readers likely know, the button is the most powerful seat at the table, as the player in that spot acts last in each betting round.* There is no limit to how many times in a row someone can be on the button, so the winner of a hand already has a slight edge to win the next one and return to the button. It’s kind of like “make it, take it” in pickup basketball.

Theoretically, Win the Button is likely meant to heat up the action at the tables, as winning a pot now has the added bonus of grabbing an advantage for the next hand. There could even be jockeying in a hand to try to prevent a player to someone’s right doesn’t win, as that would put that “someone” in the blinds.

Win the Button was most recently rolled out in Event #59 of the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). 1,414 players entered the $320 tournament and 944 re-entered, creating a prize pool of $707,400. “sousinha23” of Hungary won the event and $104,284.57.

Now PokerStars is installing Win the Button tourneys on a permanent basis in the poker room’s schedule. There will be eleven daily Win the Button tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $2.20 to $162 plus two weekly Saturday “majors.” Those Saturday events will have buy-ins of $55 and $5.50. Here is the complete daily schedule for the new PokerStars Win the Button tournaments:

02:10 – $3.30 Re-Entry $750 Guaranteed
03:30 – $4.40 8-Max R+A $500 Guaranteed
07:10 – $5.50 $1.5K Guaranteed
09:10 – $55 $4K Guaranteed
11:15 – $3.30 $2K Guaranteed
14:00 – $162 Ultra Deep $5K Guaranteed
14:10 – $3.30 $2K Guaranteed
16:15 – $11 $3.5K Guaranteed
19:00 – $11 R+A $1.5K Guaranteed
21:15 – $2.20 Re-Entry $1K Guaranteed
23:15 – $33 Re-Entry $2K Guaranteed

PokerStars representatives offered up the usual comments about the new offering. “We are proud to continue to deliver exciting & innovative games, the largest variety of tournaments anywhere in the world and to be the home of online poker,” said Severin Rasset, Director of Poker Innovation and Operations at PokerStars, in a press release.

Legendary poker streaming and member of Team PokerStars Pro Jason Somerville said, “I love the interesting twist of Win the Button tournaments. I’m very much looking forward to competing in these tournaments more regularly. It’s awesome to see PokerStars continue to innovate and develop new fun-oriented tournament variants like Win the Button.”

*Except, technically, pre-flop, but even though the blinds act after the button, they have already put money into the pot involuntary. The button is still the last to act in the pre-flop round out of the players who are not forced to pony up a blind.

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