How a Folding Table Top Turned Our Card Table Into a Real Poker Night

For most of the nine years I have hosted Friday night poker, the game started with the same ritual. Six of us would squeeze around an old four-foot round kitchen table in my basement, and my wife Diane would hand out coasters like they were ration cards. Cards slid off the edge. Chips ended up in somebody's lap. Ray, my brother-in-law, kept his drink on the floor beside his chair and forgot it every single week. We were not playing serious poker. We were playing around a table that was not built for it.

I tried the cheap fixes first. A blanket over the table to stop the cards from sliding. A sheet of plywood cut to size. A no-spill cup for Ray. None of it changed the basic problem. Six grown men around a round table still have elbows in each other's space, and there is nowhere to put a drink that is not directly over the cards. I did not want a full poker table in the basement. I wanted the table I already had to behave.

That is why I bought the Trademark Poker 48-inch folding table top about two years ago. It is a solid wood topper with a vinyl surface, shaped octagonal, and it opens across the old round table. The listing says space for up to eight players, and it has built-in cupholders and chip trays. It folds in half and comes with a zippered carrying bag. I set it up the first Friday and did not tell anyone I had changed anything. Tom, my neighbor, walked down the stairs, looked at it, and said, 'Well, that makes sense.'

The first night told me most of what I needed to know. The topper sat flat on the old table and gave everyone a real edge to work from. The chip trays kept stacks from becoming a pile in the middle. The cupholders kept drinks off the playing surface and off the floor. Nobody knocked anything over. That had not happened in years.

I am not going to pretend it is a piece of furniture. It is a topper. You need a table under it, and you need a place to put it when the game is done. Mine folds in half and leans against the wall behind the furnace room door. At 20.2 pounds it is not hard to move, but it is not something you tuck under one arm with a bag of chips either. The folded size is listed as 49 by 2 by 25 inches, so it stores like a thick sign, not a table.

The first Friday with the Trademark Poker topper, nobody knocked a drink off the table. That had not happened in nine years.

What I like best is that it did not change the game. We still play six players most Fridays, small stakes, same guys. The extra room means the dealer is not reaching across somebody's elbow, and the chip trays mean the bank stays on the bar where it belongs. The surface wipes with a dry cloth, which matters when Tom brings pretzels. The wood frame and vinyl surface have held up for two years of weekly use. I have not had to baby it.

The one thing I would tell anyone buying it is to measure first. It is 48 by 48 inches, octagonal, and it needs a table that can carry it. My old round table is four feet across, so it works. A smaller table would leave the topper overhanging. The 30-day warranty against manufacturer defects is normal for this kind of thing, not a reason to buy it. Buy it because your current table is too small for the crowd you have.

We also changed other things over time. About two years ago I switched the game to Copag 1546 plastic cards because paper decks kept bending and getting beer on them. About five months ago I bought a KPAW automatic card shuffler because Ray's hands stiffen up with arthritis and shuffling had slowed the game to a crawl. The topper made those changes work better, because there was finally a proper surface to deal on. The table top was the first piece that made the basement feel like a card room instead of a kitchen table with delusions.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If we were sitting at my kitchen table, I would tell you the Trademark Poker topper is not a cure for a bad game. It will not make you a better player, and it will not make your friends show up on time. What it does is remove the small irritations that wear a game down. The drink that gets knocked over. The chip stack that merges with the next guy's. The card that slides off the edge on the river. Those things add up. A flat, octagonal surface with a place for every drink and every stack takes them off the table.

I would also tell you to keep your expectations honest. It is a folding topper, not a permanent poker table with legs and a dealer tray. It lives on top of another table and leans against a wall between games. If you want a table that stays set up, buy a table. If you want your existing table to do the job for six or eight players without a renovation, this is the piece I would start with.