General Pai Gow Tile game play

Each player receives four tiles as their hand. The dealer also receives a hand to play against all players at the table. These tiles will remain face down until all players have set their hands.

The tiles must be arranged in two hands of two tiles each, one low hand and the other a high hand. In order to win, the low hand must beat the dealer low hand and the high hand must beat the dealer high hand. Because this game has relatively even odds for the casino, the house will collect a 5% commission on all wins (e.g. bet $100, get paid $95 on a win). If one hand wins and the other hand loses, then the player “pushes” and keeps their bet. If both hands lose to the dealer, then the bet is forfeit.

The primary goal is to get each hand as close to 9 as possible. The tiles are added together and the ten’s digit is truncated to get the score of the hand. For instance, if a tile with 8 dots and 5 dots are in the same hand, they add together to 13 and become “3”. To make this more complicated, understanding the rankings is important because it’s ideal to split the high ranking tiles between the two hands. There are also hands that are higher called Gongs, Wongs, and Pairs.

After determining which tiles will form the hands, they are then placed face down, stacked 2×2, with one hand on the left and the other on the right. All four tiles are pushed in front of the bet, telling the dealer that the hand is set. Once the tiles are set, don’t touch them again as the dealer cannot open their hand until everyone at the table has finished.

The good news is that there is no way to automatically lose the hand by missetting or playing it incorrectly. Unlike Blackjack where you can bust, or Pai Gow Poker (which is nothing like Pai Gow Tiles) where you can misplay your hand and automatically lose, the worst you can do is misset your hand. In the more strict casinos, if you lose because of a misset hand, they take your money. But many time a pit supervisor will give you a single mulligan and reset the hand for you. But don’t make the mistake again; next time it will be a loss.

Once all players set their hands, the dealer will reveal their tiles and set the hand according to “house way.” As the house, they must play their hand according to their specific casino rules. However, an individual player can set the hand anyway they like. Because the dealer plays against all hands, they typically follow the most conservative play option. As a player, there are more favorable options since only one hand needs to be beaten to win.

Did I win?

Here’s where Pai Gow amnesia comes in which afflicts the best of us. After seeing your hand and setting your tiles, you probably looked at your friend’s hand, another player showed their tiles to you, and now you can’t remember your hand! It’s OK, you don’t have to do anything more except wait for the dealer to flip over your hand and check to see if you won. However, a word of caution… in the US, we haven’t seen any Pai Gow Tile machines that show the dealer how to play their hands. There is a lot of room for human error and I have caught many mistakes in game play and payout. Always be alert.

In order to win, both of your hands need to beat both of the dealer’s hands, matching low to low, and high to high. If both the player and dealer hand have the same point score in a hand, then the winner is determined by the highest ranking tile in the hand. If both the player and dealer have the same high ranking tile, that is considered a “Copy” and unfortunately (or fortunately if you are the dealer), the dealer wins all copies. This rule is part of the house edge which is why it’s beneficial to be the house.