Pai Gow Poker
Pai Gow poker is loosely based on a Chinese
Domino game, but uses poker hands instead of dominoes.
In some places the dealer is the house, in others the
dealer position rotates among the players. To make things as
fair as possible, if the dealer position rotates among the
players, each player should have the same number of turns
in dealer position. Up to seven persons can play at the same time.
Some casinos use a fancy dealing protocol where the dealer
(house) deals out seven seven-card hands and discards the
four remaining cards. At that time, the dealer shakes a dice
cup with three dice, rolls them, totals up the dice, then
counts counterclockwise up to the dice total in a sort of
sophisticated eenie-meenie-miny-moe fashion to determine who
gets the first hand dealt.
If it is an informal game or the dealer position rotates
among players, the dealer simply deals out seven cards in
the normal fashion.
Each player has to use his seven cards to form two hands: a
five-card hand and a two-card hand. The five-card hand must
be better than the two-card hand and there are a few extra
rules about hand ranking.
The game is played with a standard 52 card deck plus a
joker. The joker is only partly wild however. It can be
used as an ace or to complete a flush or to complete a
straight.
Additionally, the hand A,2,3,4,5 is the second highest
straight or straight flush.
All hands are compared against the dealer's hand. If both
hands beat the dealer's hands, the player wins. If both hands
lose to the dealer's hands, the player loses. If one hand
beats the dealer and one hand loses to the dealer, it's a
"push" meaning no money changes owner. In cases of absolute
ties, the dealer wins.
In Pai Gow poker you have two basic decisions: how much
to bet and how to make the best five-card and two-card
hands so that the five-card hand is higher. In some
places you can show your hand to the dealer who will set
the hand the way the house would set it. In some places,
though, you can't do that.
Pairs will win the two-card hands and generally two pairs
will win the five-card hands. Sometimes it is difficult
to know whether to split two pairs and some casinos have
rules for this. Generally, you don't split low pairs (6's
or lower) and don't split any pairs of 10's or lower if the
two-card hand has an ace as a high card.
A "pai gow" is a hand with no pair.
Pai Gow poker is slower-paced than other types of
poker games due
to all the shuffling, seven card dealing, and the prevalence
of ties and pushes. The advantage is that a buy-in of $20
can last a long time in Pai Gow poker.
In Pai Gow poker games where the dealer position rotates, it is the ratio
of how much you bet, when you are the dealer to how much you
bet, when you are a player that can improve your odds. The
greater the ratio of your bets as dealer to your bets as
player, the better your overall odds will be in Pai Gow poker.
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