Author: horse-racing-free-tips

We’re moving right along with our Pai Gow series. You’re almost a professional Pai Gow player now. Since you know most of the game play, it’s now time to talk about the hand rankings Pai Gow. After all, it doesn’t make much sense to play if you don’t understand what makes a winning hand.

Five Aces

Unlike traditional poker-based games where the Royal Flush is king, in Pai Gow, the five aces hand is trump. Getting five aces is tough and there’s only one way to do it. You need to get all four aces in the deck and the joker.

Royal Flush

To get a royal flush, you must have the 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of one suit-like Clubs. The Joker can be used in place of the Ace.

Straight Flush

The straight flush consists of five cards in sequential order that are all of the same suit. Here’s an important note. In Pai Gow, the A-5 straight flush is the highest ranking straight and the King-high straight flush is the second highest.

Four of a Kind

To get a four of a kind, you need four cards of the same rank, such as four Jacks. Remember, the Joker can be used as an Ace.

Full House

When you have three cards of one rank and two cards of another rank-like three Jacks and two Queens-you have a full house. Should both you and the Banker have a full house, the player with the highest-ranking three set of cards wins. The pair won’t matter.

Flush

Five cards that are all of the same suit and not in sequential order is a flush hand. The Joker can be used as an Ace of any suit, so if you have the Joker, you just need four cards of the same suit.

Straight

When you have five cards in sequential order and they are of more than one suit, you have a straight. If they were all the same suit, you’d have a straight flush. The Ace can be used at the front, such as A 2 3 4 5, or the end, such as 10 J Q K A.

Three of a Kind

Simply put, three cards of the same rank is a three of a kind hand-like AAA.

Two Pair

You have this hand when you have two cards of one rank and two cards of another rank, such as: JJ KK.

One Pair

Having two cards of the same rank is having one pair-like 44.

High Card

Finally, if you have absolutely nothing above, you have a high card hand. This is the worst hand in Pai Gow.

When you’re setting your 2nd highest hand, which consists of just two cards, you’ll have either a high card hand or one pair. Needless to say, when you have one pair as your 2nd highest hand, you have a great shot at winning that hand.

And there you have it. You’re now ready to take on the Pai Gow playing world. In our final article on playing Pai Gow, we’ll go over a couple of quick strategy tips.

Today’s lesson will deal with setting your hand. We’ve already got the game flow down. In another article, we’ll go over strategy a bit more. Setting your hand is the main function in Pai Gow. Don’t worry if you don’t know how Pai Gow hands rank, because that’s the next part of this series.

In Pai Gow, the Ace can be used at the front or end of the deck. For instance, it could be used as Ace, two, three or Queen, King, Ace. The Joker can be used as an Ace or to complete a straight, flush or straight flush.

Once you have your seven cards, I find it’s best for beginners to sort their cards from highest to lowest or lowest to highest. If you’re playing Pai Gow online, this might already be done for you. Remember, we’re going to be creating two hands from these seven cards-the highest hand, which is five cards and the 2nd highest hand, which are the remaining two cards.

When you make your hands, the highest hand must actually be the highest hand. For instance, let’s say your hand is: J J 3 4 5 Q Q.

You couldn’t make your 2nd highest hand be QQ, because the highest hand would be JJ 3 4 5 and it wouldn’t actually be the highest hand.

Let’s keep that example going. Part of the strategy in Pai Gow is figuring out how best to set your hands. In our example, we could do something like JJ QQ 3 and 4 5 or something like JJ 3 4 5 and QQ. So, we’d either have two pair and nothing or one pair in each hand. Remember, if you can win at least one of the hands, you keep your cash.

Once you have decided how to set your hand, you place each of the two hands on their appropriate space on the table. Online Pai Gow players will have this done for them.

I can’t reiterate this enough: don’t take setting your hand too lightly. It’s a strategic game. Ideally, you want your second highest hand to be as high as possible, so you can at least force a push.

If your second highest hand won’t have a pair, put the two highest ranking cards in there-out of what’s left. Let’s say your hand is: J J A Q 4 8 3.

For the above hand, we’d want to keep the pair of Jacks in the highest hand. That leaves us with the Ace, Queen, 4, 8 and 3. It would be best to take the Ace and Queen and put those two cards in the second highest hand.

Now that we have a basic understanding with setting hands, it’s time to go over hand rankings. We’ll do that in the next article.