Pai Gow Poker, or
double-hand poker, is an Americanized version of Pai Gow,
in that Pai Gow Poker is played with playing cards while Pai
Gow is played with chinese dominoes.
The game is played
with a standard 52-card deck of cards, plus a single joker.
It is played on a table marked with seven betting locations
if one of the players serves as "bank"; in a casino
where players play against the house, there are only six betting
spots.
The cards are shuffled,
and then dealt to table in seven face-down piles of seven
cards, with four cards unused, regardless of the number of
people playing. Each hand is assigned randomly to a betting
spot. One common way of doing this is to roll three six-sided
dice, then count betting spots clockwise from the first until
the number on the dice is reached; then give that spot the
first hand, the next spot the next hand, and so on until all
seven hands have been allotted. If there is no bet placed
on a particular spot, the hand is still assigned but then
placed in the discards with the four unused cards.
Each player is playing
against the banker, who may be the casino dealer or one of
the other players.
The object of the
game is to create two poker hands out of the seven cards in
your hand: A five-card poker hand and a two-card poker hand.
The five-card hand must rank higher than your two-card hand.
The two-card hand is often called the hand "in front",
and the five-card hand is called the hand "behind",
as they are placed that way in front of the player when he
is done setting them. The only two-card hands are one pair
and high cards; no straights, flushes, etc. The joker plays
as a bug: that is, in the five-card hand it can be used to
complete a straight or flush, if possible; otherwise it is
an ace. In the two-card hand, it always plays as an ace. Five-card
hands use standard poker hand rankings, with one exception:
in most Nevada casinos, the hand A-2-3-4-5 ranks above a king-high
straight, but below the ace-high straight A-K-Q-J-10. In California,
this rule doesn't apply.
If each of your
now-separated hands beats the baker's corresponding hand,
then you win your bet. If only one of your hands beats the
banker, then you push. If both of your hands lose to the banker,
then you lose. On each individual hand, ties go to the banker
(for example, if your five-card hand loses to the banker and
your two-card hand ties him, you lose).
In casino-banked
games, the banker is generally required set their hand in
a pre-specified manner called "house way", so the
dealer does not have to implement any strategy in order to
beat the players. When a player is banking, he is free to
set the hand however he chooses.
