Your seven cards
How to set it (house way)
This free Pai Gow Poker calculator sets your hand for you. Tap your seven cards, or deal a random hand, and it splits them into a five-card back hand and a two-card front hand the way a typical house way would, with the reason in plain English.
Pai Gow Poker calculator: how the hand is set
You must make the back hand stronger than the front, and you win only if both your hands beat the banker’s. One win and one loss is a push, which happens about four hands in ten. That’s why the house way spends so much effort balancing the two hands.
The rules it follows, in short:
- No pair: highest card in the back, the next two in front.
- One pair: pair in the back, the two best other cards in front.
- Two pair: split them, low pair in front, unless both are low or middling and you hold an ace (or a king with two low pairs) to play in front. Aces always split.
- Three pair: highest pair in front.
- Trips: keep them in the back, except three aces, which split into a pair behind and an ace in front.
- Straights and flushes: in the back, keeping a pair for the front when one is left over.
- Full house: trips in the back, pair in front.
- Four of a kind: keep 2s to 6s together; split higher quads unless there’s an ace or a pair to play in front.
The joker counts as an ace, or fills a straight or flush. Four aces and the joker make five aces, the top hand.
House ways differ
Every casino has its own house way, and they disagree on a handful of hands, mostly two pair with a king and quads in the middle. If your table’s card says differently, follow the table. The differences are worth a fraction of a percent at most.
Played the house way, Pai Gow Poker has a house edge of roughly 2.5% to 2.7% once the 5% commission on winning hands is paid. Because so many hands push, the game is slow on your money: at £10 a hand and 30 hands an hour, the average cost is under £10 an hour.
For the hand rankings, see the poker hand rankings. For other casino poker games, try the Three Card Poker calculator or Ultimate Texas Hold’em strategy.
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