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Pai Gow Poker At Online Casinos

Pai Gow Poker At Online Casinos

Added: May 8, 2013

As the name suggests, Pai Gow Poker originated from a Chinese gambling game that was played with tiles. Later it was adapted using playing cards and presented in American land casinos. A typical Pai Gow Poker table at land casinos seats six players who wager independently with the dealer. When online casinos had established themselves, software providers included an online variant of Pai Gow Poker in their portfolios. Online Pai Gow Poker is usually a single hand game in which a player wagers alone against the dealer. The Pai Gow Poker deck consists of 53 cards. The extra card is a joker. The objective of the game is to make two hands with the cards dealt such that each hand has the chance of being higher ranked than the corresponding hand of the dealer.

The game play in the Pai Gow Poker variants offered by different software providers is essentially the same. There will be differences in table limits, the visual appearances and the customization features. The player first places the ante wager. He then clicks on the “Deal” button and is dealt seven cards face up, while the dealer is dealt seven cards face down. The player has to split the seven cards into two hands. The first hand has to be of five cards and the second hand has to be of two cards. The comparison of the five card hands will be done exactly as per the usual poker hand rankings. For the comparison of the two card hands the hand rankings are as follows. The highest hand ranking is a pair, which is followed by the ranks of the cards.

The player has to split his cards in accordance with online Pai Gow Poker rules. The main rule is that the two card hand has to have a lower hand ranking than the five card hand. The joker can be used as a wild card only for making a straight or a flush. Otherwise it is used as an ace. There are two options are available to the player for splitting the cards into the two hands. Expert players can follow the manual way, in which they click on the cards required in the two card hand. Only those players who are aware of the optimum strategy should avail of this option. If optimum strategy is not employed then players will make the wrong choices and can lose significantly in the long run. Novice players can click on the “House Way” button, which automatically splits the cards using optimum strategy. Using the House Way makes the online Pai Gow Poker game less challenging. Therefore the ideal procedure is to first use the manual way and verifying it using the House Way.

After the player completes his moves the dealer’s cards are exposed and automatically split using the House Way. The player’s five card hand is compared with the dealer’s five card hand and the player’s two card hand is compared with the dealer’s two card hand. Tied hands result in the dealer winning. If the player wins both hands then he is paid even money less a 5% commission for the online casino. If the player wins one hand and loses the other then the bet pushes. If the player loses both the hands then he loses his bet.