Basics Of Online Pai Gow Poker

Pai Gow is a Chinese gambling game that is played using tiles. It was adapted for card play and presented as Pai Gow Poker, because it is based on poker hand rankings. Pai Gow Poker is played using a deck that has 53 cards. These are the normal 52 cards and a joker.

You start by placing the ante bet. Actually this is the only bet you place. Once you enter you have to play your hand. There is no folding or surrender. When you click the “Deal” button seven cards will be dealt face up to you. The dealer’s seven cards will be dealt face down. You have to split your seven cards into two hands. The larger hand will have five cards and the smaller hand will have two cards. The five card hand exactly follows the normal poker hand rankings. The rankings for the two card hand are as follows in descending order: pair and then the ranks of the cards. There are no straights or flushes in the two card hand.

You have to aim for the highest possible rankings in each of your hands. But there are two important constraints. The two card hand has to have a lower hand ranking than the five card hand. The joker can be used as a wild card only to make a straight or a flush in the five card hand. In all other cases it is used as an ace. At Australian online casinos you can construct the two hands on your own, if you are sure you possess the requisite skill. You click the cards that you want in the two card hand. If you are unsure about the optimum Pai Gow Poker strategy it is better to use “house way”, which automatically splits the cards to your best advantage. A good way to learn is to first split the cards manually and the override the selection using the house way.

Once your move is complete, the dealer’s cards are then exposed and split using the house way. Your five card hand is compared with the dealer’s five card hand and your two card hand is compared with the dealer’s two card hand. Tied hands go to the dealer. If you win both hands then you are paid even money less a 5% commission. If you win one hand and lose the other then the bet pushes. If you lose both the hands then you lose the bet. Using the house way, online Pai Gow poker has an average return of 97.3%.