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.
