Pai Gow
Pai Gow is a Chinese domino game that became very popular in many casinos thanks to the Chinese communities. Once the game was played in underground casinos in China but since then it became loved by all players who enjoy betting on domino tiles.
There's also a card variation of this game that is called pai gow poker. This variation was invented in order to get around gambling laws, but in here we'll focus on the original pai gow game that is played with the Chinese dominoes tile set.
The words pai gow mean "make nine" and this is why many believe that this is the original version of the casino game Baccarat.
The set-up
On the talbe, the tiles are stacked into eight random stacks of four tiles each. This is called 'the woodpile'. Three dice are being thrown to decide who plays the first hand and each player is getting a stack from the woodpile.
The goal
The main goal of pai gow is to divide the four tiles into two pairs. A pair is also called a hand. A player wins the bet if both of his hands outrank the bank. If only one of the pairs outrank the bank there's a draw and if the bank outrank the player's hands, the bank, obviously, wins.
Ranking
The best hand is a nine. In order to calculate the value of a hand you have to sum up the total of the pips on the two tiles and to drop the tens place.
- Gee Joon- Is the best possible pair in pai gow. It is made up of two tiles: 4-2 and 2-1.
- Bo- is the second best hand. Bo means pairs which can be made up of matched or unmatched tiles with the same total.
- Wongs- is the next best hand. Wongs are nine paired with a double six or double one. The double six are better than the double one combinations.
- Gongs- are eight paired with a double six or double one.
- Other hands- add the total of your pips and you'll get all the other available hands in pai gow.