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Pai Gow (Chinese: ; pinyin: páijiu, Cantonese:
paai4 gau2) is a Chinese gambling game. It is played
with the Chinese dominoes tile set. The game is played
in underground casinos in most Chinese communities.
It is played openly in major casinos in Macau, China,
Las Vegas, Nevada, Atlantic City, New Jersey, in many
California cardrooms, and in some Australian casinos.
It is an ancient game, thousands of years old, and steeped
in tradition.
The name "Pai Gow" is sometimes
used to refer to a card game called Pai Gow Poker (or
Double Hand Poker ), also popular in Nevada and California,
and which is loosely based on the Chinese game.
Rules
The set-up
Tiles are randomized on the table,
and are stacked into eight stacks of four tiles each.
This assembly is known as the woodpile. Various ritualistic
"shuffles" are made, rearranging the tiles
in the woodpile in standard ways that result in a new
woodpile. Bets are then made.
Next, each player (including the dealer)
is given four tiles with which to make two hands of
two tiles each. The hand with the lower value is called
the front hand, and the hand with the higher value is
called the rear hand. If a player's front hand beats
the dealer's front hand, and the player's rear hand
beats the dealer's rear hand, then that player wins
the bet. If a player's front and rear hands both lose
to the dealer's respective hands, the player loses the
bet. If one hand wins and the other loses, the player
is said to push, and gets back only the money he or
she bet. Generally seven players will play, and each
player's hands are compared only against the dealer's
hands.
Basic scoring
The name "Pai Gow" is loosely
translated as "Make Nine" or "Card Nine".
This reflects the fact that, with a few high-scoring
exceptions, the best a hand can score is nine. To find
the value of a hand, simply add the total number of
pips on the two tiles, and drop the tens place. So for
instance, a 1-3 tile (a tile with one pip on one end
and three pips on the other, for a total of four pips)
used with a 2-3 tile (with five total pips) will score
nine, since four plus five is nine. A 2-3 tile with
a 5-6 tile will score six, and not sixteen, because
you drop the 1. And a 5-5 tile with a 4-6 tile will
score zero, since ten plus ten is twenty, and twenty
reduces to zero when you drop the tens place.
Gongs and Wongs
There are special ways in which a
hand can score more than nine points. The double-one
tiles and double-six tiles are known as the Day and
Teen tiles, respectively. If a Day or Teen tile is used
with an eight, the pair is worth ten instead of the
usual zero. (This is called a Gong.) If a Day or Teen
tile is used with a nine, the hand is worth eleven instead
of one. (This is called a Wong.) But a Day or Teen tile
used with a ten is only worth two, not twelve; this
is because only eights and nines can be combined with
Days or Teens for higher values. (In other words, when
Day or Teen tiles are combined with tiles other than
an eight or nine, follow the normal scoring rules.)
The Gee Joon tiles
The 1-2 and the 2-4 tiles are called
Gee Joon tiles (or sometimes called wildcards). Either
tile can count as 3 or 6, whichever scores more. So
a 1-2 tile can be used with a 5-6 tile to make a hand
worth seven points, rather than four.
Pairs
The 32 tiles in a Chinese Dominoes
set can be arranged into 16 pairs, as shown in the picture
at the top of this article. Eleven of these pairs have
identical tiles, and five of these pairs are made up
of two tiles that score the same, but look different.
(The latter group includes the Gee Joon tiles, which
can score the same, whether as three or six.) If a hand
is made up of a pair, it always scores higher than a
non-pair, no matter what the value of the pips are.
(Pairs are often thought of as being worth 14 points
each.)
When two pairs are compared, the higher-valued
pair wins. This is not determined by the sum of their
pips, but by aesthetics. It must be memorized which
pairs score more than other pairs. The highest pairs
are the Gee Joon tiles, the Teens, the Days, and the
red eights. The lowest scoring pairs are the mismatched
nines, eights, sevens, and fives. But even the lowest-scoring
pair will beat any non-pair.
Ties
When one of a player's hands is compared
to one of the dealer's hands, it sometimes happens that
both will have the same score. For instance, a player
may have a front hand worth one point, consisting of
a 3-4 tile and a 2-2 tile, and the dealer may have a
front hand also worth one point, made up of a 5-6 tile
and a 5-5 tile. In these cases, determine which tile
in each hand has a higher value, as determined by the
pair rankings mentioned above. In this case, the 2-2
tile is in a higher-ranking pair than the 3-4 tile,
and the 5-5 tile is in a higher-ranking pair than the
5-6 tile. (Again, the rankings of the pairs follows
no obvious pattern and must be memorized.) Since the
5-5 pair outranks the 2-2 pair, the dealer would win
this front hand. In the unusual case of a true tie,
where the dealer's high tile would be in the same pair
as the player's high tile, the dealer wins the tie.
There are two exceptions to the method
described above. First, although the Gee Joon tiles
form the highest-ranking pair, they are considered to
have no value when evaluating ties. Second, any zero-zero
tie is won by the dealer, regardless of the tiles in
the hand.
Strategy
The basic decision to be made in Pai
Gow is how to arrange one's hands. Given any four tiles,
there are always three ways to arrange them into two
hands (although some arrangements may be functionally
identical to others). Sometimes one way will be clearly
superior to another, but at other times it is difficult
to determine the best strategy.
For instance, consider the four tiles
at right. It would clearly be unwise to combine tile
A with tile B, since each hand would be worth zero.
It would make more sense to combine tile A with tile
C, in which case both hands would be worth 5. Or you
could pair tile A with tile D, in which case your front
hand would be worth 3 and your rear hand would be worth
7. Which is a better choice?
If you think the dealer will have poor
hands, such as a front of 1 and a rear of 6, you would
want to pair tile A with tile D in order to maximize
your chance of winning. If you are afraid the dealer
may have a better hand, such as a front of 4 and a rear
of 9, then you will want to pair tile A with tile C
in order to maximize your chance of pushing. You might
also consider that pairing tile A with tile D will make
it more likely that a tie would break in your favor.
Experience will help a player get a
feel for which hand combinations will work well in which
situations. Many players use various superstitions as
well, believing that one should (for instance) never
pair a 6-4 tile with a nine.
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