Pai Gow Poker Rules, Strategy and the House Way
How to set a Pai Gow Poker hand, the house way that plays it near-optimally, why banking matters, and the real cost including the commission and copies.
Pai Gow Poker is the slowest game on the casino floor and, played with the house way, one of the more reasonable. You split seven cards into two poker hands, and both must beat the dealer’s for you to win. Pushes are frequent, swings are small, and a session can last a remarkably long time on a modest bankroll.
How it plays
- Place a bet. You and the dealer each receive seven cards.
- Split your seven into a five-card “high” hand and a two-card “low” hand.
- The single hard rule: the five-card hand must outrank the two-card hand. Setting the two-card hand higher is a “foul” and loses automatically.
- Both hands are compared to the dealer’s corresponding hands.
| Result | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Both your hands beat the dealer’s | Win (pays 1:1 less 5% commission) |
| You win one, lose one | Push — bet returned |
| Both your hands lose | Lose |
| A hand exactly ties (a “copy”) | Dealer wins that hand |
Because you must win both hands to be paid, and copies go to the dealer, pushes are the most common outcome — often close to 40% of hands. That is what makes the game so slow-moving.
The two-card hand does the work
The five-card hand is usually obvious — it is your best poker hand. The skill is in how much strength you move to the two-card hand, because that hand has to beat the dealer’s two-card hand too, and the best a two-card hand can be is a pair.
The core principle:
Make your two-card hand as strong as possible without making your five-card hand weaker than it.
With two pair, for example, you often split them — the higher pair stays in the five-card hand, the lower pair goes to the two-card hand — rather than keeping both in front and leaving two low cards behind. Whether to split depends on how high the pairs are, and this is exactly the sort of decision the house way encodes.
The house way
Every casino publishes a house way — the fixed algorithm the dealer uses to set their own seven cards. You are entitled to ask the dealer to set your hand the house way, and doing so plays within about 0.2% of optimal. For a casual player that is close enough that learning a full strategy chart is rarely worth the effort.
Rough outline of a typical house way:
- No pair: highest card in the five-card hand, next two highest in the two-card hand.
- One pair: pair in the five-card hand, two highest remaining in the two-card hand.
- Two pair: usually split — high pair back, low pair front — unless the pairs are low and you hold an ace, in which case keep both and play the ace in front.
- Three pair: highest pair to the two-card hand, keep the other two in front.
- Full house: split — three of a kind back, the pair in front — almost always, because it strengthens the two-card hand enormously while the five-card hand stays strong.
- Straights, flushes, better: keep them intact in the five-card hand unless you can keep the straight/flush and put a pair in front.
Banking is where the value is
Pai Gow lets players take a turn as the banker, playing against the other players and the dealer’s own wager. The banker wins copies. That single fact moves the edge substantially:
| Role | House edge (incl. 5% commission) |
|---|---|
| Playing against the dealer | 2.84% |
| Banking | ~1.46% |
Banking roughly halves your cost. The catches: you must have enough in front of you to cover all the bets you are banking against, the commission is charged on your net win, and the house dealer typically co-banks (bets against you) on your turn. Even so, banking every time it is offered is the single biggest strategy improvement available in the game.
The commission
Winning hands pay 1:1 minus a 5% commission. On a $20 win you keep $19. Some casinos have moved to commission-free Pai Gow variants that instead reduce a specific winning hand (often a banker win with a queen-high pai gow pushes, or certain hands pay less) — the house edge on those is broadly similar, sometimes marginally better. Read the felt.
Cost per hour
The slowest game in the house, with constant pushes — perhaps 30 hands an hour and a low fraction of them resolved.
| Role | Edge | $25 bets, 30 hands | Effective cost/hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player, house way | 2.84% | $750 wagered | ~$21, but many pushes |
| Banking half the time | ~2.15% blended | $750 | ~$16 |
The nominal figures overstate the pain, because pushes mean much of that “wagered” money comes straight back. Pai Gow is often cited as the cheapest way to sit at a table for hours on a small bankroll, and with banking it lives up to that.
See also: Three Card Poker · house edge, every game