[JM]

Manufacturer: Unbranded
Retailer(s): 5StarDeal http://www.5stardeal.com/deals/10Exp...de=10-TH-4FOLD
Average Price: $60 retail, $1 Ebay
Material: Wood & felt and a little paint
Member Review by: JM

The following review is of a portable folding tabletop texas hold-em poker table. The tabletop itself folds in quarters for storage and transport. The whole thing fits into a nice carry case, which makes transportation easy. It only takes a few seconds to set up and take down. When this tabletop is folded for storage/transport, the dimensions are as follows: 36” Wide x 20” Tall x 4” Thick and probably about 30 pounds. Open its 36” Wide x 78”-80” Long and about 1” Thick (I say 78-80” Long because the length varies depending upon the manufacturer. Mine is about 80”). This is great if you don’t have room for or can’t afford a dedicated poker table, or if you tend to play in different places a lot. It’s the perfect size to cover most dining room tables and also works well on your typical 6 foot wood grain veneer table with folding metal legs that you find at businesses, Staples, etc.

Price

I paid $50 plus $28 shipping and don’t regret it at all. You can find them now for as little as 99 cents, but they jack up the shipping & handling fee to $45 or more to make up the difference. Still a great deal for well under 100 bucks in my opinion.

Feel

The felt is decent quality but there is no padding under it. This makes chip tricks a little difficult, but makes chip stacks real stable. It seems to be made of a not so heavy wood, like pine, but has a smell a little like cedar. Cards move pretty well across it, except sometimes they can hit a seam where it folds and get stopped or deflected. This seems to be more of a problem with paper cards than with quality cards like Copag & Gemaco. The yellow paint (explained below) can also catch a paper card, but doesn’t affect plastic ones much. I prefer this side to the plain side.

Looks

The tabletop is reversible, so if one side gets damaged or stained, etc. you can easily convert it to use the other side. This is a nice looking tabletop for the price. The felt is your typical poker table green. On one side its completely plain and the other side there is a yellow oval outline painted in the middle. There are no rails or padding around the edge at all. There are 3 seams on the table where it is folded, but they are virtually invisible and do not detract from the looks of the tabletop.

There are 8 built in plastic trays around the table that have 4 slots for chips and a cup holder too. The depth for each is only ½” so they aren’t great for holding chips, and won’t keep a drink from spilling. But it’s better than having people put a wet glass on the felt. I don’t much care for the chip racks, since they don’t hold chips well (not like a real chip rack) and most would rather have their chips stacked in front of them. I prefer to use mine to hold M&Ms and stack my chips on the table next to it.

The racks are placed 2 on each long side and then one in each corner. This works ok for the people along the sides of the table, but if you are playing at a typical dining room table, you have one person at either end and the trays aren’t really in the right place for these players (except for the drink holder). They are reversible along with the table. You just pop out the spring-loaded pins, pull out the trays and reinstall on the flipside. Its too bad they didn’t make the underside of these trays flat so you could turn them upside down and make them flush with the tabletop if you didn’t want to use them.

Mine came with the bag you see in the pictures below. Its made of nylon or some similar material and is zippered. The straps are long enough to use as a shoulder strap, which is the easiest way to carry this table. No problems with the bag so far either, still good as new.

Durability

I have used this table every month or so for a good 9-10 months now and it is as good as new. Its really as sturdy and stable as the table you use it on, which is nice since you would most likely be using this on someone’s dining room table. Since both sides are covered in felt, they don’t need to worry about it marring the table either. The hinges on this tabletop seem strong and should not pose any problems. They are set into the wood and are covered with felt, so you can’t even tell where they are. I have folded and unfolded this table many times and the hinges seem as strong as they did the day that I purchased the table. Don’t try to fold it the wrong way though! Sometimes you lose track of which way it’s supposed to bend, so don’t force it.

Reviewers Comments

If you are looking for something that gives you a poker table feel, but is lower priced than a full-blown poker table and is very portable, then I would definitely recommend getting this type of tabletop. I needed something that I could use at home and easily take to my friends’ houses, work, etc. and this is nearly perfect. They can be found on Ebay for next to nothing now as well. I like to use the side with the yellow oval on it so players can consider the area outside the oval as the racetrack and inside the oval as the playing area. So if you are making a bet, your chips go over the line and then there’s no dispute as to how many chips one bet. If they’re over the line, they are in play. Behind it, they are not.

It is kind of heavy, so shipping does add to the cost, but most of the Ebay vendors who are selling these for a buck are making up the profits in the “shipping & handling” charges which run about $45 now. Still a pretty good deal, and certainly a HUGE improvement over a green felt tablecloth on the dining room table.

The easiest way to find one is to look in this category in Ebay http://listings.ebay.com/aw/plisting....html?from=R11 You can narrow your search if you put ‘folding’ in the search parameter box, that will cut down the listings by about 50%. And you will find that some vendors are now offering this with a hideous pink felt instead of green. Personally, I can’t see getting one in anything other than green.

Pictures

Here’s a shot of the tabletop on my dining room table. The bottom left part of the pic is a close-up of the surface.



This is 1/2 of the table folded up and inserted into the bag



Below is a shot of the trays with pint glasses and a coke can in the coaster part, and 20 composites (red & white chips) in the tray. The far left shot is with 25 Paulsons crammed in the tray. As you can see, it’s only good for about 23.



Here’s a shot of the underside of the trays, showing the spring loaded pins




This is a shot of the hinged sections. Left pic is one quarter folded, right pic is half way folded. As you can see, there’s no sign of the hinges themselves.