The Deck, the Button, and the Blinds

Assumptions: All examples use a 6-max online cash game at $0.50/$1 with 100 big blind stacks and no rake unless a different setup is stated.

No-Limit Hold'em runs on three pieces of machinery: a standard deck, a rotating marker called the button, and two forced bets called the blinds. Get these three things straight and every hand you ever play will make structural sense. Get them wrong and you'll be the player who posts the wrong blind, acts out of turn, and wonders why the table is annoyed.

The deck: 52 cards, four suits, no suit is "better"

Hold'em uses one standard 52-card deck. There are four suits — spades (♠), hearts (♥), diamonds (♦), and clubs (♣) — and each suit contains thirteen ranks: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, T (ten), J (jack), Q (queen), K (king), A (ace). Four suits times thirteen ranks gives you the 52.

Two rules about the deck matter more than anything else:

• Ranks have a strict order. The ace is the highest card, the deuce is the lowest. The only twist is that the ace can also play low to make the wheel straight A-2-3-4-5 — you'll meet that in the hand rankings lesson.
• Suits have no order at all. A king of clubs is exactly as strong as a king of spades. No pot in Hold'em is ever decided by "my flush is in hearts and yours is in diamonds." Suits only matter for making flushes; they never break ties. If you've played games where spades outrank hearts, delete that idea now.

Why does this matter practically? Because when you read a board later, the only questions you'll ever ask about suits are "how many cards of one suit are out there?" and "do I hold cards of that suit?" — never "which suit is it?"

Your two hole cards

Each player at the table is dealt exactly two private cards, face down, one at a time, starting with the player to the left of the button. These are your hole cards, and they're yours alone — nobody else sees them unless the hand reaches showdown and you choose to (or must) reveal them.

How many different two-card starting hands can you be dealt? From a 52-card deck there are exactly 1,326 possible two-card combinations. That number sounds big, but most of those combos are functionally identical — 7♣7♦ plays the same as 7♥7♠ — which is why poker players compress all 1,326 combos into 169 strategic categories (pairs, suited hands, offsuit hands). You don't need the 169 grid yet; you just need to know that your two hidden cards, combined later with five shared community cards, are the entire raw material of your hand.

The dealer button

The button is a small disc that marks which player is the nominal dealer for the current hand. Online, the site deals the cards, but the button still matters enormously because it defines two things:

1. Where the cards go first. Dealing starts at the seat to the button's immediate left and proceeds clockwise.
2. Where the action ends. After the flop, the player on the button acts last on every betting round — the single biggest positional advantage in the game.

After each hand, the button moves one seat clockwise. Always clockwise, always one seat. Over six hands at a 6-max table, every player holds the button exactly once, posts the small blind exactly once, and posts the big blind exactly once. That rotation is what makes the game fair: the cost of the blinds and the benefit of late position get shared equally around the table.

The six seats at a 6-max table, in clockwise order starting from the player left of the big blind, are usually labeled: UTG (under the gun), HJ (hijack), CO (cutoff), BTN (button), SB (small blind), BB (big blind). Position names move with the button, not with the players — you are "the cutoff" only for the one hand in which you sit one seat right of the button.

The blinds: forced bets that create the fight

Before any cards are dealt, two players must put money in the pot:

• The small blind (SB), posted by the player immediately left of the button. At $0.50/$1, that's $0.50.
• The big blind (BB), posted by the player two seats left of the button. At $0.50/$1, that's $1.

The stake name itself — "$0.50/$1" — is just the two blind sizes. When players say a table is "one-two live" they mean SB $1, BB $2.

These are called blind bets because you post them before seeing your cards — blind to your holding. Nobody else owes anything preflop; everyone besides the blinds can fold for free.

Why do blinds exist? Without them, the perfect strategy would be to fold every hand except the absolute best ones and wait forever at zero cost. Nobody would ever have to put money in with a vulnerable hand, and the game would die of boredom. The blinds plant money in the pot before anyone has cards, so every single hand starts with something worth fighting over: $1.50 at our stake. They also create urgency over time. Each orbit of a 6-max table costs you $1.50 in blinds — 1.5 big blinds per six hands, or 0.25bb per hand dealt — so folding forever is a slow leak, not a free option. That steady tax is precisely what rewards players who learn to attack the blinds and defend their own.

One more vocabulary item: the blinds are live bets, not dead money like an ante. If nobody raises preflop, the small blind may complete (add $0.50 more to match the $1), and the big blind may check and see a flop for free, or raise. Posting blind doesn't strip you of your options when the action gets back to you.

Worked example: a full setup at 6-max

Here's how a hand begins when you're on the button.

BTN

7♣♣7♣

7♦♦7♦

SBunknown

BBunknown

1. 1.SB posts $0.50
2. 2.BB posts $1
3. 3.Cards are dealt clockwise starting with the SB
4. 4.UTG folds, HJ folds, CO folds

Walk through what just happened. The button posted nothing. The small blind put in $0.50 and the big blind put in $1 before either saw a card. The deal went clockwise starting from the small blind, two cards to each of the six players. Action then started with UTG — the first player left of the big blind — and folded around to the button.

Now the button holds 7♣7♦, a middling pocket pair. Is it any good here? Against one random hand, a pair of sevens wins about 66% of the time — a clear favorite against the two unknown hands behind him, and he's attacking $1.50 of dead money while holding positional advantage for the rest of the hand. Raising here is automatic. Notice the asymmetry the blinds create: the SB and BB are forced to defend money they posted blind, out of position, against a player who chose to enter with a hand that's a 2-to-1 favorite over a random holding. That asymmetry — built entirely out of the button-and-blinds structure — is the engine of most preflop strategy you'll learn later.

The heads-up exception

Everything above describes three or more players. With exactly two players, the blind positions change, and this is the rule new players get wrong constantly:

Heads-up, the button posts the small blind, and the other player posts the big blind. The button/SB acts first preflop, and the big blind acts first on every street after the flop — which means the button still acts last postflop, preserving its advantage.

Why the switch? If heads-up kept the normal arrangement (button posts nothing, opponent posts both blinds), one player would pay both forced bets every single hand, which is obviously broken. And if the big blind were on the button, the same player would have both the cheapest preflop price and last action postflop — too much advantage stacked on one seat. The actual rule splits it: the button pays the smaller blind and acts first preflop (a cost), but acts last postflop (the payoff).

BTN/SB

A♦♦A♦

8♣♣8♣

BBunknown

1. 1.BTN posts the $0.50 small blind
2. 2.BB posts the $1 big blind
3. 3.BTN acts first preflop and raises to $2.50
4. 4.BB calls $1.50 more

Analysis

Trace the deal order too: heads-up the deal still starts left of the button, so the BB receives the first card and the button/SB receives the last one. The button/SB then acts first preflop; postflop the order flips and the BB leads off every round. If you ever sit at a table that's emptied down to two players, expect to post the small blind on your button — and expect to act first before the flop.

Joining a game mid-orbit

The rotation also governs how you enter a game. Sit down between the button and the blinds and you'd get several free hands before paying anything — so rooms don't allow it for free. Online you'll get a prompt with the standard choices: wait for the big blind to reach you naturally (free, but you sit out a few hands), or post a big blind immediately to be dealt in right away. The posted blind plays like a real big blind — it counts toward calling any raise. One seat is always off-limits to a new entrant: you can't come in on the button, where you'd enjoy the best position while owing nothing. The cheap, patient play is waiting for the blind; the rotation makes everyone buy in to the fairness scheme before they profit from it.

Putting the structure together

A few checks you can run right now to confirm the mechanics are locked in:

• Who posts what? SB = first seat left of the button, posts the smaller amount ($0.50 here). BB = second seat left, posts the full amount ($1). Button and everyone else post nothing.
• Which way does the button move? One seat clockwise after every hand. That means this hand's small blind becomes next hand's button, this hand's big blind becomes next hand's small blind, and the player who was first to act (UTG) posts the next big blind. Run that mental film a few times until it's automatic — knowing exactly when your blinds are coming is basic table awareness.
• Heads-up? Button = small blind, acts first preflop, last postflop.

The blinds also explain the rhythm of a session. At 6-max you'll post $1.50 per orbit no matter what cards arrive, so over 100 hands you've paid roughly $25 in blinds before making a single decision. Winning players don't resent that tax — they understand it's the same for everyone and that the button, where they pay nothing and act last, is where they'll collect it back. Every lesson that follows — action order, hand rankings, betting rules — sits on top of this rotation of button, small blind, big blind, one seat clockwise, forever.