A time comes in every poker players life when he or she gets tired of playing poker on the kitchen table. Kitchen tables are hard. They scratch and dent chips and it's next to impossible to shuffle your chips on a hard table. For these poker elite, the time has come to invest in a high quality poker table. But what should you look for in a poker table? What kind of wood should it be made out of? What should the dimensions of the table be? How much are can you expect to spend? All very good questions. Let's see if we can ferret out a couple of answers.



First let us look at the shape of the poker tables available. These are round, octagon or oval. Let us look at the octagon and oval ones. Firstly the octagon table; as it's name implies it can fit 8 people comfortably. It will even have little places for each person to keep their chips and drink. These are quite friendly tables as you will be fairly close to each other.

The next type of poker table is slightly less popular. It's the oval table A.K.A. the Texas Hold'em table. Texas Hold'em has exploded in the past 3 or 4 years and tends to be the home game of choice these days. These long oval tables can seat up to 10 people comfortably and are perfect for the flop-turn-river dealing style of Texas Hold'em...if you have someone dealing full time. If you're passing a button then the flop-turn-river get dealt into whatever odd corner the dealer happens to be sitting in. This table is great for formal tournaments, but a bit of a pain for home games.

So what sort of wood will you want to use? This will depend on how much money you have to spare and of course your decor. Hard woods like mahogany, ebony or teak are better than soft woods like pine. This is because soft woods are easily damaged whereas hard woods will withstand a lot of wear and tear.

The cost of your table will depend on a variety of facets such as what kind of wood you have and the quality of craftsmanship. Generally a table can cost anywhere from $75 for one you build yourself to $7500+ for a handmade masterpiece. So look around and find something that will fit your needs and your budget.