How to play
Asia Poker is a relative of Pai Gow Poker with three hands instead of two. It uses a 52-card deck plus one joker, shuffled before every hand.
- Place a bet and press Deal. You and the dealer each get seven cards; the dealer’s stay face down.
- Split your cards into three hands:
- a high hand of four cards,
- a middle hand of two cards,
- a low hand of one card.
- The high hand must beat the middle hand, and the middle hand must beat the low card.
- Press Set hands. The dealer splits their cards by the house way, and each of your hands is compared with the dealer’s hand of the same size.
Your cards start arranged the house way. Tap a card to move it to the next hand (high → middle → low → high), or press House way to go back to the suggestion.
Who wins
| Your hands | Pays |
|---|---|
| All three beat the dealer | 6:5 |
| Two beat the dealer | 1:1 |
| One or none | bet lost |
Ties go to the dealer. If one of your hands exactly equals the dealer’s hand of the same size (a “copy”), the dealer wins that hand. With three hands there are no pushes.
Hand ranks
- Four-card hand: four of a kind, straight flush, three of a kind, flush, straight, two pair, pair, high card. With only four cards, three of a kind is rarer than a flush, and a flush is rarer than a straight. A-2-3-4 is the lowest straight.
- Two-card hand: a pair beats any two different cards.
- One-card hand: the higher card wins. Aces are high.
The joker counts as an Ace. In the four-card hand it can also complete a straight, a flush or a straight flush.
The house way
The dealer’s split isn’t guesswork. For every possible split of the seven cards (up to 105), the game knows how strong each hand is compared with all hands of that size from the deck. It then picks the legal split most likely to win at least two of the three hands. The same calculation gives you the starting suggestion.
Some splits look odd at first. For example, with three pairs and an ace, the house way may keep two pairs together in the four-card hand, put the third pair in the middle and the ace in the low hand.
The odds
Playing the house way against the house way, the player wins about 47% of hands, because copies go to the dealer. About one hand in six wins all three hands and is paid 6:5. Over 100,000 simulated hands, the house edge came out at about 2.6% of the bet.
If you enjoy Asia Poker, try Baccarat or Baccarat Banque next.
