Home/Pai Gow Poker/Guide
Standard American casino Pai Gow Poker: a 52-card deck plus one joker, a 5% commission on winning bets, and the house way below for how the banker's hand gets set. A couple of casinos do a detail or two differently — every spot where that's true is called out as it comes up.
The two hands
Your 5-card hand (sometimes called the high hand) is scored exactly like standard poker. Your 2-card hand (the low hand) can only ever be a single pair, or two unconnected high cards if you don't have a pair to put there — there's no such thing as a two-card flush or straight. The one rule that governs every decision you'll ever make here: the high hand must rank higher than the low hand. Set it backwards — a low hand that would beat your own high hand — and the whole seven cards foul: an automatic loss, no matter how good the cards were.
Once both hands are set, each is judged on its own: high hand against the banker's high hand, low hand against the banker's low hand. Win both and you win the bet at even money, minus a standard 5% commission. Lose both and you lose the bet. Win one and lose (or tie) the other, and nothing happens at all — your bet simply comes back, win or lose be damned on the other hand. One more wrinkle worth knowing before it costs you: an exact tie on either hand — a "copy" — always goes to the banker, not the player.
Worked examples
Same rules, two different outcomes. Both hands below are set with the MGM house way — the same reference below — so you can see exactly why each result came out the way it did.
Pair of Kings stays in the high hand; the two highest kickers (9, 7) form the low hand.
Pair of Queens stays in the high hand; A-10 — the two highest kickers — form the low hand.
Queens (high tier) and Tens (medium tier) — a Medium+High two pair always splits: Queens anchor the high hand, Tens become the low hand.
Jacks (high tier) and 8s (medium tier) split the same way: Jacks anchor the high hand, 8s become the low hand.
Hand rankings
Standard poker hand ranking applies to the 5-card hand — high card up through straight flush. Pai Gow Poker has exactly one widely-used variation on that, and it's worth knowing before it surprises you:
This quirk is standard at most American casinos, though a handful (notably in California and Michigan) drop it and treat A-2-3-4-5 as the lowest straight like every other poker game — Sim Royale uses the more common version. Everything else about hand ranking is ordinary 5-card poker: pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, in that order. Above all of them sits Five Aces (four Aces plus the joker), the best hand in the game.
The 53rd card
One joker rides along with the standard 52 cards. In your 5-card hand, it's semi-wild: it always counts as an Ace, so it can make a pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, or even Five Aces with your real Aces. The only other thing it can be is the missing card in a straight, flush, or straight flush. It never stands in for any other rank, so a pair of 7s plus the joker is still a pair of 7s with an Ace kicker, not three 7s. In your 2-card hand, the joker only ever plays as an Ace — it can't make a wild pair there. An Ace-and-joker 2-card hand is specifically the single best possible low hand on the table, ranking above even a real pair of Aces.
How the banker's hand gets set
The banker doesn't get to choose — their seven cards are split by a fixed, published procedure called the house way, the same one you're offered if you ever tell a real dealer "play it for me" instead of setting your own hand. It's not necessarily the mathematically perfect play in every single spot (a sharp player can occasionally eke out a sliver more EV deviating from it), but it's close in essentially every spot and it's the standard a hand-setting trainer grades against — same as basic strategy for Blackjack. This reference follows one specific, fully published house way (MGM Grand's); other casinos' house ways agree on almost everything here but differ on a detail or two, which is normal for this game.
Sort your seven cards high to low. The single highest card stays in the 5-card hand along with the four lowest cards. The second- and third-highest cards become your 2-card hand.
The pair always stays together in the 5-card hand. Your two highest remaining cards (the kickers) become the 2-card hand.
Pairs are grouped into three tiers: low (2–6), medium (7–10), and high (J–A).
"Split" means: the higher pair stays in the 5-card hand with the best remaining kicker, and the lower pair becomes your 2-card hand. "Keep together" means both pairs stay in the 5-card hand (as two pair), and your two best remaining cards become the 2-card hand.
With three pairs across your seven cards, the highest pair always becomes your 2-card hand. The other two pairs, plus your one leftover card, form the 5-card hand as two pair.
Keep the three of a kind together in the 5-card hand, with your two best kickers as the 2-card hand — unless it's three Aces, in which case break one Ace off into the 2-card hand (paired with your best kicker) and play the remaining pair of Aces in the 5-card hand instead. If your other four cards happen to form two separate pairs rather than two unpaired kickers, the higher of those two pairs becomes your 2-card hand (which is just the two-best-kickers rule applied to a pair instead of random cards).
Break the higher three of a kind down into a pair for your 2-card hand. The lower three of a kind stays whole in the 5-card hand, filled out with the two cards left over.
Four 2s through 6s: never split — keep all four in the 5-card hand. Four 7s through 10s: split into a pair for the 2-card hand, unless you have a spare Ace — then play that Ace in the 2-card hand instead, and keep all four together in the 5-card hand (with your lowest remaining card as its kicker). Four Jacks through Aces: always split into a pair for the 2-card hand — except four Aces with a pair of Kings among your other two cards: keep all four Aces together as the 5-card hand (the strongest possible one), and play the pair of Kings as your 2-card hand instead.
A made straight or flush is kept whole in the 5-card hand, with your two best remaining cards as the 2-card hand.
Split by default: the pair comes out of the full house to become your 2-card hand, and the three of a kind stays in the 5-card hand along with your two leftover kickers. The one exception: if that pair is specifically a pair of deuces, and your two leftover kickers are an Ace and a King, keep the full house intact as your 5-card hand instead and play the Ace-King as your 2-card hand.
Only possible with the joker in play — four real Aces plus the joker. Normally, break it: two Aces become the 2-card hand (an unbeatable low hand short of the one combination below), and the other three Aces plus your two leftover cards form the 5-card hand. The one exception: if your two leftover cards happen to be a pair of Kings, keep all five Aces together instead — the best possible 5-card hand in the game — and play the pair of Kings as your 2-card hand.