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Pai Gow Poker
The Americanized version of Pai Gow is called Pai Gow Poker. In this game you play with cards and poker hand rankings instead of Chinese dominoes. The game is played with a standard 52-card deck plus a single joker. Each player is playing against the banker, which may be the casino dealer or one of the other players at the table.
The goal is to create a five-card poker hand and a two-card poker hand out of the seven cards in you receive. The five-card hand must rank higher than your two-card one. The two-card hand is the “in front” or “on top” hand while the five-card one is “behind” or “bottom.”
The dealer shuffles the cards and disperses them in seven face-down piles of seven cards, with four unused. There are no straights, flushes, or anything else with your two-card hand, just one pair and high cards. Five-cards use the standard poker rankings that apply to regular poker. The joker can be a wild card that is used to complete a straight or flush, but otherwise it counts as an ace.
You need to beat the banker’s hand with both of your two hands in order to win, if you win only one hand and lose the other then you push, and if you lose both hands then you lose your bet. The banker’s edge comes in that all ties go to the banker.
When the casino is banking the game, there is normally a specific manner in which they are required to set their hand. However, when a player is the banker he is free to set his hand how he chooses and try to implement a strategy. If the player decides to co-bank with the house then he must set his hand the house way.
Most casinos take a flat 5% commission which may seem high, the game is slow-playing and there are a lot of pushes, so the house doesn’t win as much money as with other games.
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