Pai Gow Poker rules and strategy

What Pai Gow Poker is

This is a house-banked card game that borrows its structure from pai gow, a Chinese game played with dominoes, and its hand rankings from five-card poker. It was developed for American card rooms in the 1980s and moved online as a computer-dealt table game. You aren’t playing against other customers: your two hands are compared with two hands set by the dealer under fixed house rules.

What makes Pai Gow Poker different from most casino card games is how often nothing happens. Because a win needs both of your hands to beat the banker, and a loss needs both to lose, a large share of rounds end level. That makes it slow and steady, which is either its main appeal or its main drawback, depending on what you want from an evening of table games.

If you are new to poker hand rankings, our beginner’s glossary and the royal flush entry cover the basics you need.

How to play Pai Gow Poker step by step

The online version follows the same order every round:

1. Place your main wager, plus any optional side bet, within the table limits shown.
2. Seven cards are dealt to you and seven to the dealer from a 53-card deck (a standard deck plus one joker).
3. Split your cards into a five-card high hand and a two-card low hand. Most online versions offer a House Way button that sets them for you.
4. Check that your five-card hand ranks higher than your two-card hand. If it doesn’t, the hand is a foul, and the usual rule is that you lose.
5. Confirm your hands. The dealer’s cards are revealed and set using the house way.
6. Each of your hands is compared with the dealer’s matching hand: high against high, low against low.
7. Win both and you are paid evens minus a 5% commission; win one and lose one and your stake is returned; lose both, or tie on both, and the stake is lost.

Ties on an individual hand, known as copies, go to the banker. So if your low hand is Q-J and the dealer’s is also Q-J, the dealer wins that hand.

Pai Gow Poker hand rankings and the joker

The five-card high hand uses normal poker rankings, from high card up to royal flush; some versions also include five aces, made with the joker, as the top hand. The two-card low hand can only be a pair or high cards, so the best possible low hand is a pair of aces.

The joker is semi-wild. It counts as an Ace, unless it can complete a straight, flush or straight flush, in which case it fills the missing card. In many versions A-2-3-4-5 ranks as the second-highest straight, below A-K-Q-J-10; the help screen confirms which rule your table uses.

How to set your hands in Pai Gow Poker

Setting the hands is the only real decision, and the house way gives a sensible default. Its rules vary between casinos, but the main principles are consistent:

• No pair: keep the highest card in the five-card hand, and put the next two highest cards in the two-card hand.
• One pair: keep the pair in the five-card hand, and put the two highest remaining cards in front.
• Two pairs: usually split them, putting the higher pair in the five-card hand and the lower pair in front. Many house ways keep both pairs together when the hand also holds an Ace that can go in front and the pairs are small.
• Three of a kind: keep it in the high hand, except with three aces, where one Ace commonly moves to the low hand.
• Straights and flushes: keep the straight or flush in the high hand if you can still put two decent cards in front; otherwise consider breaking it.

Worked example: you hold A, K, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 with no pair. The five-card hand is A-8-6-4-2 and the two-card hand is K-10. Putting the King and 10 in front gives the low hand the best chance of winning, and the Ace keeps the high hand competitive with the dealer’s high card.

Pai Gow Poker payouts, commission and house edge

The main bet pays evens on a win, but the casino takes 5% of the winnings. A £10 winning bet returns £19.50 including your stake, not £20. That commission, together with the rule that copies go to the banker, is where the house edge comes from.

The standard published house edge is about 2.7% when you play against the house’s banker and set hands well. Some land-based tables let players take turns as banker, which lowers the edge, but online RNG and live versions in the UK generally don’t offer that option. A commission-free variant may exist in some lobbies; it removes the 5% but adds another rule, typically a push on certain dealer hands, so the edge is similar. Check the return to player figure in the help screen of the exact game you open.

Side bets at the Pai Gow table

Most versions add an optional bonus bet that pays according to the best five-card hand you can make from all seven cards, regardless of whether your main hands win. The best-known is the Fortune bonus, which pays fixed odds for hands such as three of a kind or better, with large multiples for seven-card straight flushes and five aces.

These bets are priced very differently from the main game. Their edge depends on the paytable the casino chooses and is usually several times higher than the 2.7% on the main bet. If you place a £1 side bet on each of 100 hands, you will mostly see small losses punctuated by rare payouts. Our side bet entry explains how to read their returns.

Variants: RNG, live and commission-free Pai Gow

Live Pai Gow is uncommon at UK-facing live casinos, so most players in Great Britain will meet the computer-dealt version. If you like a slow pace and lots of pushes, Casino Hold’em and Three Card Poker are the closest live alternatives, although both have more volatile results.

UK rules that apply to online Pai Gow Poker

Since 17 January 2025, the Gambling Commission has extended its online game design rules beyond slots. The remote technical standards (opens in a new tab) now require RNG casino games such as Pai Gow Poker to:

• allow at least 5 seconds per game cycle, measured from the start of one round to the start of the next;
• have no autoplay, so you must start every round yourself (see the autoplay ban);
• not let you play several games at once; and
• show your net position and the time you have been playing.

Pai Gow is naturally slow, so the 5-second rule rarely changes how it feels, but it does stop a computer-dealt table from being sped up into something that behaves like a slot. You will also need to pass age and identity checks before playing any version, including demo play, and credit cards can’t be used to fund gambling. The slot stake caps don’t apply; the table’s own limits do. Check that any casino you use appears on the Gambling Commission’s public register (opens in a new tab) before you deposit.

Myths and betting systems in Pai Gow Poker

• “All those pushes mean the game is close to break-even.” Pushes cost nothing, but the 5% commission and copies still give the house about 2.7% of every bet over time.
• “You can beat the house way with clever setting.” Expert setting improves on the house way by only a tiny margin; it can’t produce a player advantage.
• “Raise your bet after a run of pushes because a win is coming.” Each deal is independent, and past rounds don’t affect future ones; that belief is the gambler’s fallacy.
• “A progression system turns the edge round.” Doubling or cycling stakes changes when you win and lose, not the price of each bet, as our betting systems guide shows.

Bankroll maths for Pai Gow Poker

Pai Gow’s high push rate makes it unusually easy to plan for. Suppose you bet £10 a hand and play 40 hands in an hour. You stake £400 in total; at a 2.7% edge the expected cost is about £10.80 an hour. About 16 of those hands will be pushes, roughly 11 or 12 will win £9.50 each and about 12 will lose £10 each, although actual counts vary from one hour to the next.

Compare that with a game of similar edge but no pushes, and your balance moves far less in Pai Gow, so a £100 bankroll tends to last longer. That is useful for keeping a session within budget, but it doesn’t make the game profitable. Add a £1 Fortune side bet to each hand and the hourly cost can roughly double, depending on the paytable.

Decide your limit in advance and use your casino’s deposit limit and reality check tools. UK casinos have had to prompt you to set a financial limit before your first deposit since 31 October 2025.

Where to play Pai Gow Poker in the UK

As a speciality title, it isn’t in every lobby. Search the casino’s game library by name before signing up, and confirm the operator holds a Gambling Commission licence using our guide to checking a casino licence.

The offers below are from licensed partners Casumo, PlayOJO and Coral. None is a Pai Gow bonus. PlayOJO’s offer is 80 free spins on Big Bass Bonanza with a first deposit of at least £10 (18+, new UK customers excluding Northern Ireland, 10p spins, no wagering). Before using any bonus on table games, read the game weighting rules, because card games often contribute little. If you need support, GamCare (opens in a new tab) runs the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, free and 24/7.

18+. Gambling should be entertainment that costs money, not a way to make it. Set a deposit limit before you play: how to set deposit limits. Free, confidential help: National Gambling Helpline 0808 8020 133.