How do I check the value inside an HTML element and use it in an if statement

So, I am trying to check the value inside an HTML element and use it as a conditional in an if statement in Javascript/TypeScript.

I am trying to do the following: if the element contains “-“, you can stop playing, else, click the button and proceed with the game.

I initially created a variable where I could store the element

 const gameButton: string = '#GameButton';

Then I created an if statement where I used gameButton inside the conditional:

if (gameButton.includes("-") {
 console.log("Stop the game")
} else {
console.log("Click button to continue")
}

What is happening is that regardless of the value inside the button, I am still getting the “Click button to continue” message on console each time. What is the correct way of doing this?