Pai Gow Poker
A banking card-table adaptation of the ancient Chinese tile game Pai Gow: each player splits seven cards into a five-card hand and a two-card hand, both of which must beat the banker's.
Coming soon — not yet playable
Rules
Pai Gow Poker is played with a standard 52-card deck plus one joker (the joker is limited — usable only to complete a straight, a flush, or as an ace). Each player, and the banker (who may be the house/dealer or, in some venues, rotate to a player), is dealt seven cards.
Setting the hand: each player arranges their seven cards into two hands — a five-card "high" hand and a two-card "low" hand — with the constraint that the five-card hand must rank higher than the two-card hand (using standard poker hand rankings for the five-card hand; the two-card hand can only ever be a pair or two unrelated high cards, so its ranking is much simpler).
Resolution: each player's two hands are compared separately against the banker's corresponding two hands. A player wins only if BOTH of their hands beat the banker's corresponding hands; if the player wins one and loses the other, the hand is a push (tie, no money changes hands, sometimes with a small commission still owed on banked pushes at some tables); if the banker wins or ties both, the banker collects.
Historical note: Pai Gow Poker (the card version described here) was invented in 1985 by Sam Torosian at a California card room, directly adapting the mechanics and name of Pai Gow, a much older Chinese game traditionally played with a set of 32 dominoes rather than cards. The card adaptation kept the "split into two hands, both must beat the banker" structure at the heart of the original tile game.
Strategy notes: The central skill is "setting" the seven cards to maximize the chance both hands win — a common mistake is over-loading the five-card hand (e.g., putting three of a kind there) and leaving too weak a two-card hand, when splitting strength more evenly between both hands is usually correct.
Common house rules
House way / banker strategy
Casinos publish a standard 'house way' for how the banker should set every possible seven-card hand, ensuring consistency; home games adapting this for a rotating player-banker often agree to follow a simplified version of this house way rather than free-form setting.
Joker rules vary
Standard rule limits the joker to completing straights, flushes, or as an ace — some home tables instead make it fully wild, which changes hand values and should be agreed before dealing.
Commission on banked wins
Casino play typically charges a small commission (commonly 5%) on winning bets against the banker; home games either adopt a smaller agreed commission or drop it entirely for simplicity.
Related games
Based on shared category, origin, and rules that reference each other.
Face Up Pai Gow Poker
A variant of Pai Gow Poker where the banker's seven cards are dealt and set face up according to a fixed house way, and the usual 5% commission is replaced by an automatic push on Ace-high banker hands.
Learn the rules →Oicho-Kabu
A traditional Japanese banking card game, played with hanafuda-style Kabufuda cards, where the goal is a two- or three-card total ending in 9 — the best score, called 'Kabu.'
Learn the rules →Chinese Poker
The original, simultaneous-deal version of Chinese Poker: all thirteen cards dealt at once, then arranged into three hands (top, middle, bottom) and scored against every opponent.
Learn the rules →Faro
A once-massively popular banking card game (also called Pharaoh) that dominated American and European gambling halls for over two centuries, simplifying Basset's mechanic into a fast, simple bet-on-a-card game.
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