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One really recent addition to online casinos as well as land casinos is a game called Pai Gow Poker. It is a combination of a Chinese game called Pai Gow (which means ‘make nine’) and the game of poker. The original Chinese version was played using dominoes, but the poker variation is played with, surprise surprise, cards!
Pai Gow Poker is played using a standard 52 deck of cards including a joker that will count as a wild card in straights, flushes, and straight flushes. It can also be used as an ace. Unlike more common variations of poker, Pai Gow players are playing against the bank and not against each other. So the object of the game is to have two hands of cards that rank higher than the dealers.
To start with, the dealer shuffles the deck and deals out seven separate stacks of seven cards. There will be four cards remaining and these are then discarded. A round of betting begins followed by players receiving one of the stacks of seven cards. Different casinos have different methods of dealing out the stacks to players, but at an online casino it is more common for the cards to be randomly and automatically given to you.
Once you have received your seven cards, you will then set them into two hands of five and two cards. The two card hand must always be of a lower value than the five card hand. The ranking of poker hands in Pai Gow only differs slightly from the standard poker hand hierarchy. Five aces, becomes the highest value hand, made from four aces and a joker, meaning this hand even beats a royal flush.
As for the two card hand, either you have a pair, or you don’t. This means that the highest two card hand would be a pair of aces.
It is completely up to the player to make sure that their five card hand ranks higher than their two card hand. If for some reason the player isn’t careful and their two card hand is worth more, then the hand becomes known as a ‘fowl’ and the player then loses his bet.
After all the players have set their cards into two and five card hands, the dealer will then turn his own cards face up. You then compare cards in order to determine who has won. In order to win, both of your hands must beat both of the dealer’s hands. If by chance the two card hands of the dealer and the player have the same value, then they are said to be copies. This applied for five card hands too. When copies occur, the dealer wins. If one of the player’s hands beats the dealer’s but the other hand doesn’t, then it is classed as a tie.
