Playing Pai Gow

I received an e-mail from a reader who wanted to know if the Pai Gow game played with the domino style pieces is the same as the game played with the cards. The answer is yes and no. There are many similarities between the games. The object is the same where the goal is to form two hands from your tiles or cards that must both beat the two hands of the dealer.

The Pai Gow pieces that look like the dominos are called Tiles and they have red spots and white spots. The deck of tiles consists of 32 different pieces that can form hands ranking from 1 - 16 . Each player receives four tiles to start the game. The reading and setting of the tiles can be very confusing for the novice.

To make it easier for the average player the game was changed to be played with a standard 52 card deck along with a single joker. The rankings of the hands are the same as a regular poker hand so the games was called Pai Gow Poker to differentiate it from the tile game of Pai Gow. This game can be a lot of fun. It is slow paced and many hands result in ties. Here is how to play.