Pai Gow Tiles

To play Pai Gow, normally 7 players plus the dealer gather around the Pai Gow table. The dealer usually acts a “banker” as well and plays the banker’s hand. Players can assume the role of banker in turn, and the dealer then receives the house hand as a regular player. Rules on having players assume the role of banker will vary from casino to casino. For the remainder of this explanation, it is assumed that the dealer is also the banker. One should be mindful, however, that it is advantageous to be banker, and it is one of the two possible ways to make the house edge smaller.

The 32 tiles are mixed face down on the table and then put into 8 stacks of 4 tiles each. A stylized form of shuffling then occurs before the stacks are distributed.

First, bets are placed in the betting circles in front of the players. The dealer shakes three dice. The number rolled (3 to 18) determines which player receives the first stack. The dealer counts counterclockwise from the banker as 1. Then the stacks are distributed from that person around the table.

The dealer and players each receives four tiles. The objective is to organize two hands with two tiles in each. The lower value hand is the “front hand,” and the higher value hand is the “rear hand.” To win, the player must beat the dealer’s front hand with the player’s front hand, and the dealer’s rear hand with the player’s rear hand. If the dealer’s hands prevail in both cases over the player’s, then the house wins. If there is a split, the bet is a push. Ties between hands are settled by a hierarchy of tiles, described below. The front hand must be lower value than the back hand, or else the wager is lost.

Pai Gow means, roughly, “make nine.” The highest hands (with a couple of exceptions) are nines. Adding all the dots or “pips” on the tiles together and dropping the “tens” digit if any is how hands are evaluated (similar to Baccarat).

Hands can score more than nine points with the inclusion of the double one (called the “Day” tile, for Earth) or the double six (called the “Teen” tile, which is Tien, or Heaven in Chinese). Either one with an eight scores a “Gong,” (or “Treasure”), which is a ten rather than a zero. The combination of Teen with eight is a “Treasure of Heaven,” and the combination of Day with eight is a “Treasure of Earth.” If the Day or Teen tiles are combined with a nine, it scores a “Wong” (or “King”), which is an eleven rather than just a 1. The combination of the Teen with a nine is “King of Heaven,” and the combination of Day with nine is “King of Earth.” No other Day or Teen combinations create high scores.

“Gee Joon” (or sometimes “Gee Jun”) is the name for the 1-2 and the 2-4 tiles. They can count as either 3 or 6, whichever works to make the score higher. Thus, some people refer to them as wild cards.

Matching pairs are scored differently as well. The 32 tiles can be arranged into 16 pairs. Eleven of the pairs look like pairs, as they are identical on both ends. Five of them are considered to be pairs, even though they have different pips on the ends. This has been so for hundreds of years. Gee Joon tiles, for example, form a pair, in fact the highest pair, even though one is a 3 and one is a 6. If the concept of a non-matching “pair” is hard to handle because of years of playing poker, think of these paired combinations of unlike tiles as “partners.”

A pair in a hand always outscores a hand without a pair. A hierarchy of pair values decides contests between pairs. The hierarchy is set by tradition, not the counting of pips. The highest pairs are the Gee Joon tiles, followed by Teens, Days and red eights. At the bottom are the unmatched tiles -- nines, eights, sevens and fives.

This is the hierarchy of pairs:

Ties between hands are settled by reference to the tile hierarchy above for pairs, so for two hands of the same score, the hand having the tile that is part of the higher ranking pair will carry the day. The exception is that the highest pair of all, Gee Joon, is considered of no rank for resolving ties. (If the tie persists after this comparison, the dealer wins. The dealer also automatically wins a zero-zero tie without resorting to pair hierarchies.)

Edge and Strategy

The only skill element in Pai Gow is the arrangement of four tiles into two hands. There are only three ways that four tiles can be put into two hands, so this usually thought easy to maximize, but it does require practice. Techniques differ. A simplified decision tree is to look for a pair first, as it will beat all non-pairs. Then look for a Day or a Teen plus a 7, 8 or 9. The seven plus a Teen or Day will form a “strong 9,” and the 8 and 9 form the Gong and Wong respectively. Remember that Gee Joon is the strongest pair. Separately, they can be worth either 3 or 6.

Each casino has a “House Way” to arrange tiles so that dealers do not have discretion in setting the house hands. Most of these “house ways” are based on the work of Michael Musante, a well-known author on Pai Gow. The Musante “House Way” is as follows. Some of these rules seem more complicated than they really are, as they are just re-expressing the game rules about Gong, Wong, Gee Jun, Day, Teen and pair hierarchies.

1. Pairs stay together. Exceptions: Gee Jun splits if there is a 6/4, 6/5 or 6/6; 2s and 12s split to make 6-8 (or higher) and also with 9 & 11; split 9s with two of 2, 10 &12; split 8s and 7s with two of 2, 10, 11 & 12. Split 8s with 9 & 11 also.
2. Day (2) or Teen (12) play with 7, 8 or 9. If 12 and 2 both present, put 12 in the high hand. Play High 9 over Wong and Gong; play Gong over Wong. Exceptions: Wong over Gong or High Nine if 4th tile is 11. Gong over High 9 when 4th tile is a 4 or when 3rd and 4th tiles are mixed 8 & 5.
3. Low hand must be as high as possible. Play the high tile in the low hand if possible. Exceptions: If the low hand does not have a long 3 or better (3 or more with the long domino or a higher ranked tile) and if the high hand can be arranged to have a 7 or higher, then make the high hand as high as possible, even if it means putting the high tile in the high hand. Put the high tile in the high hand if the hands are 8-9 or better. For the following combinations, set the tiles as specified:
4. Check after applying the rules to be sure that the hand cannot be set to show a stronger front hand and back hand. For example, sometimes the use of a Gee Jun tile (the special 3 or 6 tiles that can act as each other) might make a different arrangement stronger in both hands than following the House Way rules. In that event, the stronger hands are made part of the House Way by this rule number 4.
   

   2, 5, 6 & 12	7-high 8
   High 8, low 8, high 4, any 7	2 -high 5
   High 10, low 10, high 6, any 7	6-high 7
   High 10, low 10, high 6, low 8	6-high 8
   High 10, low 10, high 6, any 9	6-high 9
   High 10, high 8, 11, low 7	7-high 9
   High 4, low 4, gee, 5	high 7-9
   2 or 12, any 6, 5, gee	7-9
   High 6, low 6, 11, gee	7, high 9
   High 8, low 8, any 7, 9	high 5-7

If the banker and the player both use the Musante House Way to set the tiles, the house edge against a player-banker is 0.62% (due to the commission or vig). The house edge against a player is 2.39%. It is possible to reduce these edges further, but in the long run, the house commission still makes the expectation slightly negative even under optimal conditions. As is also true with Pai Gow poker, strategy in setting the hands is less of an influence on edge than the ratio of bets made when banking versus bets made when playing. If a gamer has a 50-50 mix of bets as banker and as player, the player is confronting a negative edge of about -1.5%.