How to play
Face Up Pai Gow is pai gow poker with the dealer’s cards on the table first. You see exactly what you have to beat before you split your own hand.
- Choose a chip (10, 50 or 100) and tap the Bet spot. Bets go from 10 to 500.
- Press Deal. You and the dealer get seven cards each from a 53-card deck: a standard deck plus one joker.
- The dealer’s seven cards are turned face up and set at once, the traditional “house way”: a five-card hand and a two-card hand.
- Split your seven cards the same way: tap two cards to make your two-card hand, the other five are your five-card hand. Your five-card hand must beat your two-card hand.
- Press Set hands. Each of your hands is compared with the dealer’s hand of the same size.
Best split fills in the split that does best against the dealer’s visible hand.
Who wins
| Your two hands | Result |
|---|---|
| Both beat the dealer’s | You win: the bet pays 1:1, no commission |
| One wins, one loses | Push: the bet comes back |
| Both lose | You lose the bet |
A hand equal to the dealer’s (a “copy”) counts as a dealer win.
The dealer’s ace-high pai gow: if the dealer’s seven cards make no pair, no straight and no flush, and the highest card is an ace (the joker counts as an ace), every bet pushes at once and you don’t split your hand at all. That happens on about 9% of deals.
Hands and the joker
The five-card hand ranks like ordinary poker, with five aces (four aces and the joker) as the best hand, and A-2-3-4-5 counting as the second-highest straight. The two-card hand is either a pair or high cards.
The joker counts as an ace, or as any card that completes a straight, a flush or a straight flush.
The odds
Because the dealer’s hand is face up, the result of every possible split is certain, so the best split is never a guess. We measured 1,000,000 hands:
- Splitting the best way for each dealer hand (the Best split button), the house edge is 1.55% (give or take 0.07%).
- Setting your own hand by the house way and ignoring the dealer’s cards, it is 6.1%. The dealer’s ace-high push takes away many of your easiest wins, so the house way costs a lot here.
- About 48% of hands push, counting the dealer’s ace-high pushes.
Strategy
- Always look at the dealer’s hand first. You know exactly what each of your hands has to beat.
- Win one hand for sure, then go for the other. If the dealer’s five-card hand is strong, a split that wins the two-card hand at least gets you a push.
- Don’t keep a strong five-card hand you don’t need. If any five-card hand beats the dealer’s, move your best cards into the two-card hand.
- Use Best split when unsure. It checks all 21 ways to split your cards against the dealer’s hand.
