Pai Gow, Anyone?

By: Joseph Zeleny

If you are like me, you have spent your fair share of time in a casino.  You walk by a growing sea of slot machines and do a little bit of wandering trying to decide which table is going to pay you the most for your time.

Now I am not a professional gambler when it comes to my money.  I have spent a little time playing online poker and online slots, I go to Reno and Tahoe with my wife for the food more than the cards, but I do enjoy playing the card and roulette tables.  The problem I have is boredom and often burning through my gambling budget quicker than I made it.  One on occasion, after losing my money, I wandered table to table and saw one that was completely full, players were laying out two sets of cards and were not only winning or losing, but more often than not, keeping their initial bets.

The Game was Pai Gow.

I went home and got on my computer and looked up Pai Gow.  Amongst all the ads for online blackjack and Texas hold em I found the rules and game play.  I took my new found knowledge and headed back up to Tahoe a few weeks later.  I found a small table in Harrah’s and took a seat.  I put out my money which the dealer quickly converted into a stack of colorful poker chips.

Pai Gow is a simple game once you get the basics of it.  You and everyone else at your table are dealt seven cards.  You separate those cards out into two hands.  One two card hand called the low hand, and one five card hand known as the high hand.  Now your low hand cannot be higher than your high hand.  For example if you have a pair of aces in your low hand, you have to have two pair or better in your high hand.  The object of the game is to beat the dealer in both hands and win almost double your money back.  If the dealer beats you on both hands, you lose all of your bet.  The fun and drawing part of this game which is big among the Asian communities, is that if you only beat the dealer with one hand, or they only beat you with one hand, you push and keep your money.  This may sound a little difficult, so let me try to explain through the picture I took below.

The four hands you see are the four possible outcomes of playing a dealer.  The dealer’s hand is at the top or 12 position.  The winners hand is at the left of 9 position.  The losers hand is at the right or the 3 position.  Finally, the Push hand is at the bottom or the 6 position.

12 (dealer) 5,6,8,9,9,10,J

9 (Winner) 2,10,J,Q,Q,K,A

3 (Loser) 2,3,3,4,6,7,8

6 (Push) 4,4,6,7,10,J,A

As you can see, the Dealer has a Jack and a Ten in his high hand.  These are the second best cards he has.  His high hand, which has to be his best hand, is a pair of nines.  So to beat the dealer you have to have better than a Jack and Ten in your Low Hand and a pair of nines in your high hand.

9 has a Queen and a two in their low hand.  That means that beat the dealers low hand because non of the dealer’s cards beat a queen.  The high hand is a straight from 10 to ace.  So the winner beat the dealer on both the low and the high hand.
3 only had an 8 and a seven in their low hand.  This was beat by the dealers Jack since there were no pairs and the dealer held the highest card.  3’s high hand was a pair of threes.  These were beat by the card dealers pair of nines.  Since 3 was beat in both the low and high hand, they lose their money.

6 has an Ace and a Jack in their Low Hand and a pair of fours in their high hand.  They beat the dealer on the low hand but were beat on the high hand.  Because neither party won both hands, the hand is a push and nobody lost or won any money.
The great thing about Pai Gow is the statistics of it.  You will push more than you will win or lose.  This means you get more time at the table for the same amount of money.  So on the surface, Pai Gow is an easier game to play and have fun at with the same amount of money.

Pai Gow is an easily entertaining game with many of the players being more social and getting to know each other better than a five minute cycle of black jack players.
So the next time you are wandering the casino floor give this little game a try.

You may never play blackjack or bet on red again.