Where did you get it? What do you know about it? Never saw a table with openings like that.....and one of the hallmarks of a tavern table is stretchers at the bottom, provide stability for a table that is frequently moved.
It appears to me to be a modified some other kind of table. From what I can see, it looks like walnut. How big is it?

It was purchased at an antique shop in Versailles KY (Woodford County near Lexington) in the 70's. We purchased a number of pieces there over the years including a butternut wood bonnet chest.

It was said that the bottom "shelf" was used for drinks while the top was used for playing cards. The dealer said that Old Fort Harrod in Harrodsburg, KY expressed an interest in it. Yes, it is walnut. The dimensions are 35 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches. That's all I know about it. :) I asked my husband about the date on the shipping label and he said he thought it was 1840's but can't swear to it. I could find only this one example online that is similar except it has partitions beneath the top. Thank you for your help!

https://www.harpgallery.com/html/print.php?item=17802

To be honest, with that routered inside edge on the opening in the side panel, I'd be more inclined to believe 1940 than 1840.

The overall style is 1940s-50s - it's in the MCM meets Early American area.

It might be as early as the "Colonial Revival" of the 1890s-1910s, but I would not go any earlier for a date.
The dimensions are wrong for a card table ... can't comfortably sit 4 people at it. Maybe a table for chess or other 2-person games, with the coffee cups or beer stashed under it.

I defnintely think its' older than 1940....but think 1880 to 1900 is more like it. And I think it was never a "game table" and certainly not what might have been called a pub table, and that the holes are recently added.
How about a picture straight down on the top? One board, 2 boards or narrower and planked up?
Can you take a picture of the top and of the bottom? And can you tell if the legs are hand turned? Take a calipers to them.
So far my opinion is that it's a late 19th century or early 20 walnut side table that has been modified.....and around here those tables without the modification are going for about $75 to $100.
I think that dealer and the one selling the table you pictured are "romancing the goods". I hope your butternut bonnet chest is really what they said.

I fear that "romancing the goods" may be a very polite and an undeservedly kind thing to say.

What I'd be curious about is the nature of that bottom piece, the one that the books (or the cups in the other set of pictures) are resting on. That piece of wood simply doesn't exist in antique tables. In a really good antique chest of drawers, yes, a dust board beneath every drawer to help keep the things stored within free of dust (and mice...) but in tables, no. Assuming that the top surface of that piece of wood has been finished, I'd be curious about the bottom surface. Was it finished too? And what about the underside of the table top? Was it also finished? Because I've not seen anything like this in an antique, these are the things I'd be looking at in order to decide how polite and how kind I needed to be.

LOL!! You said what I was thinking!

It works better as a drawerless desk.

But it's an odd form I don't remember seeing before.