 Pai gow poker uses a deck of 53 cards (joker for aces, straights,
and flushes). You are dealt seven cards that you must separate into a five-card hand and a
two-card hand. The only restriction is that your five-card hand must have higher poker
value than your two-card hand. Pai gow poker is one-on-one, player against banker. You can
be player or you can be banker; being banker is better. If banker’s five-card hand has equal or higher poker value
than player’s five-card hand, and banker’s two-card hand has equal or higher
poker value than player’s two-card hand, banker wins the bet.
If player’s five-card hand has higher poker value
than banker’s five-card hand, and player’s two-card hand has higher poker value
than banker’s two-card hand, player wins.
If banker’s five-card hand is higher than
player’s five-card hand but player’s two-card hand is higher than banker’s
two-card hand, no money changes hands. Same if player’s five card hand is higher than
banker’s, but banker’s two-card hand is higher than player’s.
From these rules you can see that the banker’s edge
is that the banker wins “copies”-- situations where the hands have equal poker
value. For example, banker’s ace-high straight beats player’s ace-high straight.
The 160-page Optimal Strategy for Pai Gow Poker explains
how to set every possible seven-card hand into hands of five and two cards. It also
explains how to get an edge at the game in card casinos in jurisdictions such as
California where the fee for playing is a flat dollar amount, rather than 5% of winning
bets as is the case in Nevada and Atlantic City. |
