Welcome back to the New Yankee Workshop. today we will be completing our poker table project.

I may not be Norm Abrams but if you follow these instructions you will have yourself a nice casino sized poker table to make home games a lot more fun. The first step is to go back to the previous post on getting this project started. Here’s a link. Now that you have that much, we’ll jump right in with the rest.

Draw a line down the middle of the plywood creating two 4 by 4 squares. Place the screw in the exact center of one of the squares. Tie your string around the screw. The distance from the center to the straight edge of the board is the radius of your circle. Tie your pencil to the end of the string at this length from the screw. When you hold the pencil taught on the string it should be resting on the exact edge of the board. Use this to draw a circle with a 4 foot diameter (2 foot radius). Repeat on the other side.

If you want to get fancy like we did then you can even cut out a dealer slot. Keep your string the same length. You will be doing the same circle drawing trick but with the fixed point of your string 1 foot 8 inches from the center of the long side of the board. When pull taught the pencil should rest 4 inches in from the edge at the center of the long side of the board. Now when you draw your circle you should have a curve on the side of the board that is 4 inches deep at its furthest point and about 2 feet wide. It needn’t be very large.

Now you can cut the excess off of the board with your saw. Bevel the edges with your power sander so that there are no sharp corners.

Once the board is nice and smooth on all edges you are ready to attach the carpet padding to the top with whatever type of adhesive you would like. We used contact cement and it worked great. This padding will give you the softness underneath the felt. Trim the sides so the padding is beveled along with the top of the board using your razor. Carpet padding cuts like butter with a good sharp razor but they dull fast. A dull razor will chop up the padding leaving lumps under the felt. It may take three razors to get a nice cut around the entire perimeter.

Now pull your felt tight over the padding and attach it underneath with staples. Make sure to get it nice and tight and fold under the edges of the cloth before stapling so they aren’t dangling. You don’t want to give players something to tug at under the table.

For legs we just used a couple of old saw horses but attaching some dedicated legs is self explanatory enough; it is, therefore, left as an exercise to the reader. We thought about adding cup holders but decided we didn’t want people spilling on our fresh table so side tables would be in order if you are similarly fastidious. We didn’t attach any bumpers but if I ever do I’ll certainly let you all know the procedure.

Sorry I don’t have any pictures right now but I will try to get some up in the future. If I’m ever ambitious enough to try this again I’ll take pictures while its under construction to supplement this little how to guide. It was a lot of fun to build and I recommend it to anyone who has an after noon to have fun in the garage.

First the materials and tools you will need:
*Everything on this list except the felt can be obtained at a good home improvement store. The felt is eminently available at any good arts and crafts store. Assuming you already have the power tools it will probably only cost around $60.

- 8′ by 4′ plywood between 3/4″ and 1″ thick
- carpet padding of the same dimensions
- felt of slightly larger dimensions
- utility knife with fresh sharp razors
- electric saw(or a table saw, but if you have one of those you don’t need these directions)
- a strong glue
- drill
- one screw
- string
- pencil
- staple gun
- staples
- belt sander

A casino table is 8′ by 4′ so very little material will be wasted. All you have to do is take off the corners. To do this you want to divide the board in two and draw two equal circles on it. For those of you who are geometrically challenged check out my next post (Coming Monday!) where I will explain how to do that as well as the rest of the assembly procedure.

Here’s a little discussion of how one might be able to get some mileage out of the rag ace that was so disparaged in the last post. There are times when it can pay off; the trick is recognizing those situations and disabusing oneself of thinking that it is a generally good hand. For reasons already discussed, it is not to normally be played. Especially when making the transition from small home games to serious play, it can be difficult not to perk up when an ace appears. Any hole card is only as good as the support it receives from its partner. Simply having a jack is nothing to get excited about. Pairing it with a suited 10 however opens up some options. It is the same with an ace. An ace with no support can do very little.

Little, however, is more than nothing. When is it advisable to play this hand?

Lets look at two situations. First, it is permissible to play it when the table is very short handed. Fewer than five players at a table is probably a good time to loosen up enough to pull the rags out of the laundry. This is not simply a property of the rag ace.  Obviously, fewer players means there will be fewer premium hands. With fewer premium hands in play, lower grade hands become far more powerful. This means that an ace alone can become a powerhouse. But be careful; don’t be lured back into the misleading mindset that simply holding an ace will carry the day. Another time when the rag ace can pay dividends is when it’s possible to get in on a big, preflop pot for cheap. This requires late positioning – dealer position ideally – and none or only a very small raise. This also needs to be supported by a good feel for the table. If there’s a possibility that one or more players may be waiting out monsters don’t even bother.

The dream scenario for these situations is to catch top pair on the flop allowing the ace to provide the best possible kicker. Aces on the flop are more trouble than they are worth. In the short handed situation there is always the danger of being headsup with another ace whose rag is not quite as grimy. Unfortunatly with a rag, this means that the entire flop needs to be low cards creating a greater danger of running up against a low straight. In the multi handed situation, being in late position will give all the information needed. If a lot of players stay in there are more aces out there. Most of them are probably better than a rag. With so many people obviously catching paices of a flop, a pair of aces with no support is out in no man’s land. If nothing comes up on the flop get out immediatly. There is simply no way a rag ace is going to stand up against that many other hands without having hit. The reason it is permissibile to call in this situation is because of the discipline for throwing away the rag ace every other time. Because it is played so little, it becomes mathematically favorable to take the chacne on hitting a flop if it’s cheap enough. If nothing comes, throw it away. It didn’t cost much to begin with.

Personally, I will generally ocilate between two general tamplates. Usually I will play tight and aggressive. which is to say I won’t play a lot of hands. I’ll wait until I have top shelf cards and then play them very aggressively to intimidate the other players at the table. I will rarely check or call when I’m in this mode. If I’m playing, I’m raising. When I get a monster I may allow a check or call on the first round in order to induce a reraise. Other than that I will raise immediately – increasing the amount of the raise every subsequent round. Not only does it cause the other players in the hand anxiety once they get to the last rounds but it also keeps them worried about whether I will be playing in any particular hand. This general feeling of anxiety towards me works in my favor when the close calls come down the pike. They will either make a mistake, or throw away the best hand out of fear.

Though that is how I play most of the time, very often l will abruptly switch to an extremely loose, aggressive style. Rather than wait for the premium hands, with this style I will play many more hands than I normally would. Low pocket pairs and even suited connectors may be raised preflop. Again, my betting stays aggressive. I’m constantly raising and increasing the amounts of the raises. In both cases, this forces the other players to make decisions and the more decisions they have to make, the more likely it is that they will make the wrong ones.

The trick is, learning when to switch up styles. Like I said, my default tends to be the tight aggressive template, it just comes naturally. A more aggressive style may be natural to someone else. However when I’ am in the tight mode for a while eventually I’ll get several quality hands in rapid succession. This is my cue to amp up my game. Since I’ve already built a certain amount of trepidation in the other players about getting involved in my hands, they will be very reluctant once I start playing more often following a number of significant victories. Then the pots keep falling my way and its a ripple affect that could last for some time before I pull back to a tighter position again.

Another excellent time to switch to my looser game is when I first sit down at a table where nobody knows me and I can immediatley tell that the general skill level is high, but everyone is playing pretty tight. This is a good opportunity to take down a lot of pots before the turn but I always rememeber to be very careful of the slow play. If someone seems like they are stringing along every round, I will suspect they are holding a monster and waiting for me to bury myself. Remember that these are skilled, tight players. They know how to pick their spots. In fact its precisely the move I would do against a player like me.

Whatever your style, pin it down and use it for all its worth. It doesn’t matter what it is, the awareness of it is a powerful weapon. Self knowledge is just as important as the information gathered about an opponent. A conscious variegation of style will defeat a skilled, but one dimensional player any day.

This is a poker variant that, for people who don’t play online, may be unfamiliar.

Badugi has become more popular in America only recently. It can be found primarily online. I have never seen it in Atlantic City. From what I can find scouring the internet, it is very rare to find brick and mortar poker rooms that offer it anywhere else either. But its worth trying out as it is easy to find mixed games online that have Badugi shuffled in there.  For the uninitiated, here are the rules.

It uses the draw poker playing structure but with only four cards. They are dealt face down and a player can exchange any number of cards. There are four betting rounds. The action is started with a small blind, which is equal to the “small bet” and a big blind, which is equal to the “big bet”. A “small bet” is the limit for the first two rounds. “Big bets” are reserved for the last two.

The hand ranks for Badugi are as follows. A legitimate Badugi hand must contain completely distinct cards. no two cards may be of the same suit or the same value.  If there are any duplications then one card must be discarded. This means that some one can, conceivably, have a one card hand. A four card Badugi hand always beats a three card Badugi hand and so on down the line. For hands that have the same number of cards, the lowest high card wins. The Ace is low. Here are some examples…

As, 3h, 6d, Qc VS. 2c, 4h, 5s, 6d

They are both legitimate four card hands (no two cards have the same suit or value) so the second hand wins because the 6d is lower than the Qc

2s, 3s, 4c, 7d VS. 7c, 9d, Js, Kh

Here, the second hand wins. Even though the 7d is lower than the Kh, the first hand must discard the 3s making it a 3 card hand.

There you have it, an interesting little game to try out and flex those stale poker muscles.