How to play Pai Gow Tiles

The deal

The 32 tiles are shuffled face down and stacked into eight piles of four. Each player and the dealer receives one pile. You look at your four tiles and set them into two hands of two.

Setting your hands

Four tiles can be split three ways. You do not have to declare which hand is high. The scoring makes it obvious, and the dealer will read it for you. Your job is to choose which of the three splits gives you the best chance of winning both comparisons.

This is the entire skill of the game, and it is where the money is. See the house way for the rules the dealer uses, and common mistakes for what the wrong choice costs.

How a two-tile hand is scored

Hands are ranked in four tiers, from strongest to weakest.

1. Named pairs. Any of the sixteen named pairs beats any non-pair, no matter how many pips are on the tiles. The sixteen pairs are ranked against each other by tradition. See tile rankings.
2. Wong. A Teen (6-6) or a Day (1-1) together with a nine tile. Worth 11 points.
3. Gong. A Teen or a Day together with an eight tile. Worth 10 points.
4. Points. Everything else. Add the pips on both tiles and drop the tens digit, exactly as in baccarat. The best possible score is nine, which is where the game gets its name.

A Teen or Day with a seven tile scores nine points and is called a High Nine. It is not a separate tier, but because it carries a top-ranked tile it wins most ties against other nine-point hands, so the house way treats it as a strong hand.

The Gee Joon tiles

The 1-2 and the 2-4 are the two Gee Joon tiles. Together they form the highest pair in the game. Used singly in a mixed hand they are semi-wild and count as either three or six points, whichever gives the better score. A 1-2 played with a Foo (5-6) scores seven, not four, because the 1-2 counts as six.

There is a sting in the tail. For tie-breaking purposes the Gee Joon tiles rank at the very bottom, so a hand carrying one will lose most ties.

Ties

When both hands score the same, the hand containing the higher-ranked single tile wins. If the highest tiles are also equal, the banker wins. Any zero-versus-zero tie goes to the banker no matter what the tiles are.

The commission, and why it exists

Winning hands pay even money minus a five percent commission. It is easy to read that as the house taking a cut of a game it already wins. The math says otherwise.

By exact enumeration of every matchup, a player who banks with both sides setting by the house way and with no commission charged would hold an edge of EXACT 0.9165%. The banker wins every copy, and that alone is worth more than a percent. The commission is what converts a banker's advantage into a house advantage. Remove it and the game flips.

Banking

At most casinos the turn to bank rotates around the table, and you may take it or decline. Take it. With both sides on the house way, banking cuts the house edge from 2.3939% to 0.6067%. You must have enough chips on the table to cover every bet you are banking against.