Pai Gow Poker Strategy

Before we get started on Pai Gow strategy, let’s set one thing straight: Pai Gow is a casino game. This means that whether you play it in a live or an online casino, you’ll have the negative long term EV to deal with. But that doesn’t mean you can’t win big in this game.

The dealer is usually the house, and players will go up against the house, instead of playing amongst themselves. The deal-order is decided with the aid of the dice. Each of the participants will be dealt a pile of 7 cards.

None of the players will be able to trade in those cards or to pick up additional ones he can use in his showdown hand. Each of the players has to go on to make two separate hands from his 7 cards: a 2 card one and a 5-card one. The 2-card hand is also known as “in front” while the 5–card hand is known as “behind”. At showdown, the player gets his 2-card hand matched up with the dealer’s 2-card hand.

The two 5-card hands are also compared. Hand values are the same ones used in poker everywhere. If the player’s 2-card hand is better than the dealer’s two card hand, and his 5-card hand beats the dealer’s 5-card hand, he wins.

If both the player’s hands lose to the dealer’s, he loses. If the player’s 2-card hand is better than the dealer’s but his 5-card hand is not, then it’s a push. If the player’s 5–card hand loses though and his 2 card hand ties, the dealer wins again.

This is one of the things that makes Pai Gow simultaneously fun and frustrating. A lot of hands that you play will push against the dealer. This is great when you don’t have anything and can still manage to win one of the two hands. It turns frustrating when you have an awesome hand and the dealer manages to beat one of you two hands.

I don’t have any actual statistics on this, but the probability of the dealer and you pushing has to between 40% and 50%

When the dealer and the player have the exact same cards in their 2-card hand or 5-card hand, it is called a copy and the dealer wins the tie. This is the only thing that gives the casino an advantage when you play. That is except for the 5% commission that the casino takes when you win a hand.

In live casinos, there’s obviously no rakeback, but you’re not really going to get a rakeback or a poker prop deal in online casinos either on Pai Gow. While it may seem like the Pai Gow rake is quite substantial (it may be as high as 5% on winnings) due to the fact that Pai Gow is a relatively slow game, players will not end up paying a lot of it per hour.

The best version of Pai Gow Poker you will find is the software that Real Time Gaming casinos have. The casinos that I would recommend are Cherry Red Casino or Rushmore Online. Here is a screenshot of Pai Gow Poker from Rushmore: