Button looks like a game about aiming, and it mostly is not. The aiming line is exact — it ends where your stone will stop if nothing is in the way — so the part you can practise is already done for you. What is left is deciding where a stone should go when you know your opponent throws next, and a handful of facts from the game's own numbers that decide more matches than a steady hand does.
1–2PCasualButton
Closest stone to the button takes the end — and the last stone alternates.
▶ Play NowThe hammer schedule is public before the first stone
The last stone of an end answers everything already in the house, which makes it the most valuable throw in the game. In Button it alternates on a fixed schedule: your opponent has it in the first end, you have it in the second, and it keeps swapping all match — including after a blank end, when nobody scored at all.
That means you know, before anything is thrown, exactly which ends are yours. It also flips how you should read a result. Scoring one point with the hammer is a bad end: you spent your advantage and got the minimum, and the hammer leaves anyway. Holding your opponent to nothing while they have it is an excellent end, because the hammer comes to you next regardless. The side without the last stone should be perfectly happy to blank. The side with it never should be.
The CPU always draws long, and one tap fixes yours
This is the single most useful thing in the guide, and it comes straight out of the source. The throw line sits about 66% of the sheet away from the button. When the CPU draws, it throws for a travel distance of 70% — so its aim point is roughly half a stone-width past dead centre, every single time. Difficulty adds scatter around that aim point, but the bias never changes direction: the CPU is long, never short.
Your default power is exactly the same throw. One press of ▼ takes about three-quarters of a stone-width off it, which puts your stone just short of the button — four times closer than the CPU is even trying to get. Set that once at the start of an end and your draws simply out-place its draws. On a drag, the equivalent is pulling very slightly less than whatever landed you long last time.
The front of the button is effectively uncontested. Take it.
Full power always throws your own stone away
The power range runs from a travel of 30% of the sheet up to 130%. The sheet itself runs out at about 104% of travel from the throw line. Anything above that leaves the ice unless it hits something on the way, so maximum power is not a "hard throw" setting — it is a takeout tool that only works if you are certain of contact.
The same applies after impact. A takeout needs enough behind it to carry the target off the sheet, but overpower it and both stones run out the back, which turns your throw into a free clear-out for your opponent. The preview circle shows where your stone stops; if that point is a little past the target, you have enough.
Count first, because the margin lives behind the shot stone
You do not score a point for being closest. You score one for every stone you have closer than your opponent's best. Multi-point ends are how matches are actually decided, and they only exist if you keep stones in the house rather than trading them off one for one.
We measured this while designing the game: a policy that takes out and guards beats a policy that only draws to the centre 58.4% of the time against 40.7%, at identical aiming accuracy. That gap is the whole game. So count before every throw — if you are already lying two with their last stone to come, another stone in the house is worth less than blocking the line to it.
What difficulty actually changes
Only accuracy. Easy, Normal and Hard use the same decisions — take out your shot stone when you are lying, guard when it is lying and only in the last two stones of an end, otherwise draw. What changes is the aim scatter: about one and a half stone-widths of sideways spread on Easy, one on Normal, and half a stone-width on Hard.
So Hard is not cleverer, it is tidier. Every trick above still works against it; it just punishes a loose throw of yours much faster.
