And my Texas Hold 'Em Poker Addiction
Continues
.
.
.
I don't know what possessed me or why but it did. Let me give you the background.
I enjoy playing poker. It's not the gambling so much as the game itself and being able to entertain friends. I normally only play nickel ante so we're not talking big time games. That's the way it's been for many years. Then along came Texas Hold 'Em. I first saw it on the Travel Channel and it hooked me. Now I don't watch it 24/7 but I do catch it from time to time.
I've been playing with these cheap plastic chips that I had bought while at Lajes. After watching the world poker tour and playing in Vegas, I wanted to get some better chips. I found some on-line. At the same time, Robbie was also looking but he found and pointed me to various poker tables people had built. I was intrigued and wanted to do that some day.
Ten days ago, I found a good, reasonably priced, casino quality 11.5g clay chip. I was planning a poker party for Friday so I ordered them. They arrived Tuesday. After playing with them, I decided it would be better if we didn't just throw them on the nice table. We went to a fabric store and I found some gray felt. My thought at the time was to simply cover the table. Then I thought about stapling it to some MDF panels I had in the garage and putting that on the table.
Thursday, the day before, I was thinking about the panels at work. It occurred to me that afternoon that my design wasn't going to work because the width of the fabric wasn't sufficient. So I drew up a quick diagram, thought about the materials I had on hand and what I'd need to buy and tried to estimate how long it would take to build. I figured about 3 hours. I came home that night and announced I was going to build a poker table. Connie was skeptical to put it mildly but she's learned to just let me go on these projects. I may be grumpy during construction but I'm always happy when they are finished. Me happy = Connie happy. So she smiled and gave me her approval and off I went.
I purchased some nice birch wood plywood panels, a staple gun and some stain at Home Depot. Then I proceeded to cut, jigsaw, sand, route, staple and stain everything. It was an amazing frenzy of activity that went on for 4.5 hours. I started at 7:00 and was essentially finished at 11:30. I just needed to let the stain and poly coat dry.
The next day, Friday, was the day of my poker party. I decided to blow off PT so I could finish my work and sneak out about 20 minutes early. I came home and Connie and I put the pieces on the floor and I screwed the hole thing together. When we put it up on the table even I was amazed at what I had managed to pull off in 5 hours of effort. We put some of the chips on the table and started playing with them. I had a big old smile on my face and even Connie was smiling. "Didn't think I could do it did you?" I asked her. She just smiled.
So, on a whim, I managed to create a really nice poker playing experience with a new poker table and casino style chips. I think everyone had fun. I can't wait to do it again.
