Pai Gow Moments

Most activities known to man are learned. That is, we do not know exactly how to do something at the first try. What happens is that we go through a learning process that varies depending on the person and the activity. This is where the concept of the learning curve comes in. The learning curve effect states that “the more times a task has been performed, the less time will be required on each subsequent iteration. It was discovered by the nineteenth-century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.”

You may be thinking, this is all well and good – it sounds really scientific and all – but how does it relate to Pai Gow? After all, I just want to have fun. Well, there is the issue of actually learning to play the game. Just as with other games (cards, tiles, or whatever), I am sure that if you know how to play Pai Gow, that was not always the case. If you do not know how to play it yet, well you still have to go through the process of learning the game.

So again, back to the question – where does the learning curve effect come into the picture? When you ask the question “How easy or hard is it to learn Pai Gow? it is essentially asking about the learning curve of Pai Gow. So how easy and how fast is it to learn Pai Gow?

There is not straightforward answer to this question. First of all, Pai Gow can be a little bit more complicated than the usual card game. Not everyone is familiar with the tiles and dominoes used in Pai Gow. So the first step in learning the game is to familiarize one’s self with the tiles and the different patterns first. Then one must learn the different combinations. Depending on how fast an individual can pick up these concepts, the process might take quite some time. That is why in learning Pai Gow, you would need to spend a considerable amount of time practicing the basic concepts first.

Once you have grasped the concepts of the tiles fully, then it will be easy street for you. Of course, understanding and memorizing the values and possible combinations is one thing. Actually using them correctly in a game would be another thing. As such, it would be safe to say that Pai Gow’s learning curve would be a little less steep than other card games. It takes patience and some time but it’s all worth it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 6:48 am and is filed under Learning, Pai Gow. 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.