How To Deal Pai
The aim of the game is to beat the dealer with both of your hands – the five-card ‘High Hand’ and the two-card ‘Low Hand’. It is up to you to divide your original seven-card hand into two hands that both have a decent chance of winning. The joker is a wild card, which may be used as an Ace for Aces, Straights and Flushes. When you’re dealt a hand that has a straight or flush in it as well as three of a kind, put a pair from the three of a kind that doesn’t break up the flush into the two-card hand.
Pai Gow Poker is played with a total of 53 cards consisting of 52 cards and the Joker. The Joker is fully wild, if the two-card hand consists of a “Joker”, it will automatically play as a “pair”. Ties between two hands with the same numeric value are broken by ranking. Since there is no ranked pair, the highest-ranked tile in a hand breaks the tie. If the numerical values are equally high between both hands, it’s a Copy Hand that goes to the Banker.
By opting for a fortune side bet, you are placing two bets per round, one for your standard bet and one for the side bet. If you have a limited bankroll, you may bleed your funds dry in just a few rounds. To familiarize yourself with pai gow poker’s gameplay without placing real-money bets, consider playing on betting sites that have Free Play modes. If the hand does qualify for a Bonus payoff, but not the Envy Bonus, the bet should be paid out according to the pay scale below and then the cards are locked up. Once a Player has set their hand, that Player may not touch their cards.
Sit down at a Pai Gow table and you can play for quite a while on the same stake – while at the same time getting to move quite a bit of money around. Like any bet offered by a casino, Pai Gow side bets have a negative expectation–much more negative than the game of Pai Gow alone. Avoid them unless you feel like gambling even more than you already are. Each seat is numbered one to seven beginning with whoever the banker is. A number is randomly chosen to decide who gets dealt cards first, and the dealer hands out the cards in a counter-clockwise direction. There will be times when the player and the dealer will have exactly the same hand, and when all of the cards match this is known as a “Copy Hand” and the Banker will always win if there is a “Copy Hand”.
Pai gow Poker is a variation of pai gow, which are played on playing cards rather than traditional Chinese dominoes. The first game of pai gow poker originated in 1985 in the United States by Sam Torosian, a dealer at the Bell Card Shop in San Francisco, California. Your bets in Pai Gow poker are going to be negative regardless of your strategy, so don’t expect to turn a profit. Treat making a deposit to an online casino like spending money on entertainment. If you notice that you’re spending too much, you casino will help you set weekly or monthly deposit limits.
If you have two pair of tens through deuces, split them unless you have an ace. If this happens, play the two pair in the high hand along with the ace and move the next highest card to the low hand. Each player begins by making a bet that’s at least the amount of the table minimum. Once this happens, the players and the dealer each receive seven cards. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to play the game, this article has you covered. In addition to detailing the basic rules, we’ll also discuss side bets and some basic strategy.