Pai Gow Moments

Over the years, as pai gow tiles continued to become popular in the East, some of the concepts leaked to the rest of world.  The result was two-fold.  One was that pai gow tiles were taken up by a number of enthusiasts.  That is what we have been talking about in the past months.  The other result is that the tile game evolved into something similar yet different as well.  This is what we know now as pai gow poker.

So how did pai gow poker come into existence?  Historians have traced the first games of pai gow poker back to the 1800s when the Chinese immigrants brought the tile game over.  However, perhaps due to the lack in equipment, cards were used instead of tiles.  Though pai gow poker has been around since that time, it wasn’t till the 1980s that it was offered in the casinos.

The objective of pai gow poker is to complete two winning hands that would beat the banker’s two hands.  In pai gow poker, each player is dealt 7 cards.  He has to make a hand out of 5 cards – this is called the high hand.  The remaining two cards also form a hand called the low hand.  The rankings of the hands are then played just like you would in customary poker.

How does one win?  If both the low and high hands are better than the banker’s hands, the player wins.  If the banker’s hands are better than both the player’s high and low hands then the banker wins.

In the next few posts let’s look at this game in some more detail.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 12:35 am and is filed under Pai Gow Poker, Gambling, Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.