justsomedude
Straight Flush
On my current table build I've gone down the absurd rabbit hole that is the mindf*ck of spacing cupholders on oval shaped tables.
In short, seats on the rounded ends will always have far less playable table area, and thus less leg room, due to the nature of the table shape. In that sense, I discovered that there is no "fair" way to space cup holders; the players seated along the straight edges will always have far more table area to work with than anyone on the rounded ends.
I tried spacing cup holders equally along the outside rail edge, but found with that approach the seats along the curves get really squeezed along the inside-rail edge. This is critical, because it's where your chips and elbows are during play. So then I switched to spacing cup holders equally along the inside rail edge, but then players along the curves had absurdly more outside-rail edge space than anyone else.
When I discussed this dilemma with my brother - who is the math whiz of the family - he said: "You're looking at it all wrong - inner/outer rail length can never be a fair way to apportion seat spacing on an oval table, because you have a mixed table design of circles and squares, and those sitting along the curves will always be fucked on table space no matter what you do. Ideally you'd apportion seat spaces by table area, but even that won't end up working out very well. You really just need to find a system that works 'kind of OK' with the overall table dimensions you have. Better to just test it out than to go by any equal-length solution."
So I ended up with the manually spaced configuration below. It's sort of based on equidistant inside-rail edge spacing, and then manually modified from there. I ended up changing the "top" spacing to 21.5" each, which gives 20.4" on the inside of the blue corners, as it just subjectively felt better upon trial and error.
Any one else ever go down this rabbit hole???
In short, seats on the rounded ends will always have far less playable table area, and thus less leg room, due to the nature of the table shape. In that sense, I discovered that there is no "fair" way to space cup holders; the players seated along the straight edges will always have far more table area to work with than anyone on the rounded ends.
I tried spacing cup holders equally along the outside rail edge, but found with that approach the seats along the curves get really squeezed along the inside-rail edge. This is critical, because it's where your chips and elbows are during play. So then I switched to spacing cup holders equally along the inside rail edge, but then players along the curves had absurdly more outside-rail edge space than anyone else.
When I discussed this dilemma with my brother - who is the math whiz of the family - he said: "You're looking at it all wrong - inner/outer rail length can never be a fair way to apportion seat spacing on an oval table, because you have a mixed table design of circles and squares, and those sitting along the curves will always be fucked on table space no matter what you do. Ideally you'd apportion seat spaces by table area, but even that won't end up working out very well. You really just need to find a system that works 'kind of OK' with the overall table dimensions you have. Better to just test it out than to go by any equal-length solution."
So I ended up with the manually spaced configuration below. It's sort of based on equidistant inside-rail edge spacing, and then manually modified from there. I ended up changing the "top" spacing to 21.5" each, which gives 20.4" on the inside of the blue corners, as it just subjectively felt better upon trial and error.
Any one else ever go down this rabbit hole???