Card Table & Poker Table Room Size Calculator

How to use the card and poker table room calculator

1. Pick the table: a 34″ folding card table, a 72″, 84″ or 96″ oval poker table, a 60″ round one, or your own table’s length and width.
2. Say whether people walk behind the players: to a bar, a door or the rest of the room.
3. Measure the room, wall to wall, less anything in the way. Leave it blank to see only the room each rule asks for.
4. You get the room each rule asks for, whether yours holds it either way round, the biggest oval poker table it takes, and the room drawn from above to scale.

The rule behind the numbers

A card table’s room is the chairs’. Poker Tables Americana says a player’s chair sits “roughly 18 inches from the table edge”, with another 18″ behind it to sit down, lean back and get up. No body publishes a card room for a home, so the page puts four rules side by side:

• NKBA Kitchen Planning Guideline 8: “where no traffic passes behind a seated diner, allow 32″ (813 mm) of clearance from the counter/table edge to any wall”; where traffic passes, “at least 36″ (914 mm) to edge past” and “at least 44″ (1118 mm) to walk past”.
• Pool Table Portfolio: “Add 72 inches to the table’s length and 72 inches to its width” — 36″ a side; “where people must walk behind occupied chairs, approximately 42–48 inches is more comfortable”.
• Sawyer Twain: 36″ “behind each chair”, then “6–12 inches for walking clearance”; a 96″ poker table “may require a room size of 14 × 10 feet”.
• Poker Tables Americana: “a minimum of three feet of clear space” past every edge, and “at least four feet of clear space on the ends where people exit most frequently”.

The page takes the least of each range: 42″ for the two dealers when people walk past.

The room each table needs

The card table is COSCO’s 34 × 34″ folding table, 28″ high; the ovals are Poker Tables Americana’s own: 72″ “6 feet long and 3.5 feet wide”, 84″ “7 feet long and 4 feet wide”, 96″ “8 feet long and about 4.5 feet wide”. For a 60″ round it prints “about 14×14 feet” — more than its own three feet a side. Sawyer Twain sizes poker tables by players: 72–84″ long for 6, 84–96″ for 8, 96–108″ for 9 or 10.

Five worked examples

A 34″ card table. It needs 8′ 2″ square by NKBA’s 32″ and 8′ 10″ square by the three sellers’ 36″. NKBA’s 24″ of table edge a player seats one on each 34″ side: four players.

The same card table where people walk past. 10′ 2″ square by NKBA’s 44″, 9′ 10″ square by the two dealers’ 42″, and 10′ 10″ × 8′ 10″ by Poker Tables Americana’s 4′ at the ends.

An 84″ oval in a 13′ × 10′ room. It fits by all four rules: the room is exactly the 13 × 10 feet Poker Tables Americana prints for that table.

A 96″ oval in a 14′ × 10′ 6″ room, with people walking past. No rule fits it. The biggest table the room takes is a 72″ oval by the three sellers’ rules; by NKBA’s 44″ not even that.

A 60″ round. 10′ 4″ square by NKBA, 11′ square by Pool Table Portfolio and Sawyer Twain — and 14′ × 14′ as Poker Tables Americana prints it.

Common mistakes

• Measuring the table, not the chairs. A seated player’s chair takes up to 18″ beyond the edge; the room is the table plus the chairs plus the space to get up.
• Forgetting the walkway. A door, a bar or stairs behind the players turns 32–36″ into 42–48″ on that side.
• Squeezing in the end seats. Poker Tables Americana says an 84″ oval that seats 8 may “only comfortably seat 6-7 people” in a 14 × 12 room.
• Ignoring the door’s swing. A door that opens into the room needs its own clear space — Poker Tables Americana’s “about 36 inches”.

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