Pai Gow Poker Practice
- The rules of Pai Gow Poker are relatively simple: each player receives seven cards and splits them into two separate hands - a hand of five cards, called 'the back', and a hand of two cards, called 'the front'. NB The five card hand must always rank higher than the two.
- Pai Gow Poker uses a standard deck of 52 cards plus one joker. A maximum of six players sit around the table along with the dealer. The object of the game is quite simple: to beat the banker. The banker can be the dealer, another player at the table, or a player-dealer “team.”.
For the poker fan with a taste for the Orient, Pai Gow Poker offers an interesting twist on the century’s old gambling game from China. Rather than utilizing the distinctive Chinese tiles of the traditional game with poker cards for a relaxed gambling experience. Generally speaking, for people who already know how to play poker, Pai Gow poker is a quick and easy transition, which allows you to sit down with confidence at your nearest land based casino or online format. As with most free casino games, the player will place their bet prior to getting their 7-card hand, and the fun begins from there in a contest best described as a double-handed poker game.
This is a casino gambling game based on the Chinese Domino game Pai Gow but played with playing-cards and poker combinations instead of with dominoes. It can be played by up to seven players. A pack of 52 cards plus one joker is used. The joker is a wild card which can be used only as an ace, or to complete a straight, a flush or a straight flush. This game pits you against the Dealer, who has to get a pair of Fours or better to take part in the hand. If you’re looking for a twist with your poker, try Pai Gow Poker, which combines poker with the Chinese domino game, Pai Gow. For a complete understanding of the game, check out our Pai Gow Poker guide.
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Playing Pai Gow Poker
Generally speaking, a good Pai Gow Poker game will have six players and a dealer with each being dealt seven cards from the 53-card deck including the joker that can be used to substitute in the making of a straight, or any suit to complete a flush. If it can’t be used for either of those purposes, the joker will not only be an always be an ace, but in the two-card hand a joker is always an ace, which can have strategic implications when assembling your hands.
Your primary objective when playing Pai Gow poker is create two separate poker hands out of the seven cards you are dealt. The two hands must be comprised of a larger 5-card hand, also known as the “In front,” “behind,” or “on top.” Conversely, the second hand you need to assembly will be created from the remaining two cards. That second hand is variously styled “small,” “little,” or “low” hand. When assembling your two hands, the only requirement that you must adhere to is that the larger poker hand must outrank the smaller one with a higher poker value.
To begin, the five-card hand is ranked according to conventional poker rules, whereas the only possible poker hand in the two-card hand is a pair or no pair, after which the individual cards determine the value. Once you have set your hand to your satisfaction, the dealer will turn over their cards and divide the hand in the same manner, according to specified rules known as the “house way”
Once completed, the two high hands are contrasted, and the two low hands, the hand with the higher poker value winnings. Should the comparison result in a tie, say for example that both small hands are ace/king, then the tie has go to the “banker.”
Unlike most casino games, the player may bet against the dealer, and other players in Pai Gow poker. In a process known as “banking,” the banker function rotates around the table, but at some casinos the banking role zig-zags between the dealer and each player in turn giving everyone at the table the chance to participate. The player may always decline to bank, which is typically what happens, in which case the banker option will slip back to the next player, or dealer.
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Racinos - Racetrack casinos.
Rack - A plastic container in which you can transport and count large-denominational coins, slot machine tokens, and casino plastic chips.
Rake - The money that the casino charges for each hand of poker. It is usually a percentage (5-10%) or flat fee that is taken from the pot after each round of betting.
Rank - In poker, the worth of a set of cards.
Rapid Roulette - American style roulette table layout without the outside bets: red/black, low/high, odd/even, dozens and columns. You can only bet on numbers and neighbours. The purpose for this variation is to speed up the game.
Rated - Determination by the casino that a player's skill level is above average or on a professional level. A player's rating may be stored on computer and referred to the pit.
RFB - Comped with free Room, Food, and Beverages.
Riffling (Card Riffling) - A commonly used shuffling process. To accomplish a riffle, the deck is divided roughly in half and the two halves are interleaved by pulling the card corners up with the thumbs and letting the two halves 'riffle' together. Riffling is also sometimes called 'zipping' the cards. Like card Stripping (see below), the riffling process can span a range from a fine riffle to a coarse riffle.
River - In poker, the final card dealt in a hand of stud or hold‘em. In seven-card stud, staying in until the fifth and final round of betting is called going to the river.
RNG - (Random Number Generator) A computer generated randomness that randomly assigns the outcome of a result such as a roulette spin, a keno game or a cards shuffle.
Rouletto - In Ireland roulette is called rouletto.
Roulight / Roulite - The most modern variety of Roulette. A table game that has been developed in the first instance by specialists at the Wiesbaden Casino, Wiesbaden, Germany. The game is dynamic and very fast. Players, who like to play sectors and neighbours love it. Bets can only be placed on full numbers (staight up), on two connected numbers (split), neighbours and sections of the wheel. No outside bets.
Round of Play - A round or hand of play can consist of a single wager or several wagers made during the time of a short wagering event. For example, in poker the round of play (wagering event) begins with the dealing of the cards and ends when the winning player takes the pot. In casino craps a round of play begins with the 'come out' roll and ends when the passline wagers are decided. This may take one or several rolls of the dice. In between, the player might have multiple wagers riding on several different numbers and other betting options. All wagers made between the time of the come out roll and the decision roll are considered to be part of that round of play. In roulette each spin is counted as a round of play, no matter how many bets you place.
Royal Flush (Also, Royal Straight Flush or Royal) - An Ace-high straight flush (Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten, all of the same suit); the best possible poker hand.
RVP - Recreational Vehicle Parking.
S
Sawdust Joint (US) - A term for a non-luxury gambling club.
Sawbuck - Ten dollars.
Scared Money - Money that you cannot afford to lose.
Schnaps - See 'Finale Schnaps'
Session - A period of play or a table sitting at any gambling game.
Set - In Pai-Gow poker, players set their seven cards into two separate hands of two and five cards each.
Seventh Street - In seven-card stud, the fifth and final round of betting is called seventh street because players have seven cards.
Shark - A good/crafty player often posing as a fish early in the game. See also 'Fish'.
Sharker, Sharper, or Cardsharp - A cheater.
Sharp - Astute bettor.
Shill - A person who actively plays in the game for the house, club, or casino. Usually seen at a Baccarat table to fill empty seats, until more real players join in.
Shiner - A tiny mirror or any reflecting device used by a cheater to see unexposed cards. A reflecting device used to try and glimpse the dealer's hole card.
Shoe - Device, usually a wooden box, used for holding and dispensing playing cards to be dealt. Shoe games are typically composed of six or eight decks of cards.
Short Run - A short series of wagers or game events.
Showdown - In poker, after the last betting round, the players who remain in the pot must show their hands in the showdown to determine the winner.
Shuffle Tracking - A high level blackjack playing strategy used by card counters.
Shuffle Up - Premature shuffling of playing cards by the dealer.
Shuffling (Card Shuffling) - Is a generic term which encompasses all card mixing techniques used to prepare a deck or a shoe for continued play. All casino shuffling processes employ a combination of mixing techniques. These may include 'Stripping' or 'washing' the cards as well as 'riffling', 'boxing', 'plugging', 'cutting' and other off-spring techniques. All shuffling processes employ multiple riffles of 'clumps', 'picks', or 'grabs' to achieve some level of randomization. The shoe games, which use multiple decks of cards (4, 6, or 8 decks), will often employ the most intricate riffling patterns of all. In these, the picks are riffled together and then re-picked and re-riffled in complex symmetric patterns.
Shutter - A window covering a number on a reusable bingo card. The shutter can be pulled down to mark each number as it is called.
Silver Mining - Also called Slot Walking. The practice of looking for coins left in unattended slot machines.
Single - A Straight bet on one selection, also known as a straight-up bet.
Singleton - In poker, a card that is the only one of its rank.
Sixth Street - In seven-card stud, the fourth round of betting is called sixth street because players have six cards.
Skin - A dollar.
Skin Game - In poker, a game having two or more collusion cheaters.
Skinning the Hand - In poker, a cheater's technique to get rid of extra cards.
Skoon - A dollar.
Slot Club Member - Slot clubs were invented for slot fanatics. By becoming a member you are given a card (like a credit card). Using your card while playing the slots (also table games in some casinos) helps you earn free points / cash. The rules, number of points needed to achieve regular club status, and the benefits given to the player are different at every casino.
Slot Hall - See 'Videomat Casino' below
Slot Walking - Also called Silver Mining. The practice of looking for coins left in unattended slot machines.
Smart Cashiers - Automated cashier machines that allow players to cash out their winnings/credits from their Smart cards.
Snake Eyes - When you roll a two in craps, it is called 'Snake Eyes', eyes because they look like eyes, snake because they are bad news (for the shooter).
Soft Count - (To do with gaming machines). The count of the contents in a drop box, bill validator or video game receipt collection.
Soft Count Room - A room where the soft count is carried out.
Soft Hand - In blackjack, any hand that contains an ace counted as eleven is called a soft hand.
Spinner - A winning streak.
Spooking - Used in blackjack game. The act of standing behind the dealer to peak at the hole card and then secretly convey the information to a partner player sitting at the table. An illegal form of cheating.
Spot - Any number from 1 to 80 that a player selects on a keno ticket. It also refers to the number of numbers that are marked on a ticket.
Stack - A stack of chips, usually 20 chips in a column commonly used in Roulette.
Standing Hand - In blackjack, meaning a hand which hard-totals to 17 or more, which is very likely to bust if one more card is called and therefore the player is expected to stand.
Steaming - A blackjack term where a player has become frustrated with how badly the events of a session of play have turned out. 'Steaming' in blackjack has practically the same meaning as 'going on tilt' in poker. In either case the player has lost emotional control and is betting more aggressively and often recklessly in an attempt to turn things around.
Stiff (A Stiff Hand) - In blackjack, a hand that is not pat and that may bust if hit once. Stiffs include hard twelve through sixteen.
Straight Keno - The basic keno game, played by marking individual numbers on a keno ticket.
Streak Betting - Also known as 'Progressive Betting'. A system of raising or lowering the size of one's wager based on what happened on the previous round or rounds. There are basically two kinds of streak betting systems; negative and positive. In a positive streak betting or positive progression betting system the size of the player's wager is raised on the next round after a winning round. In a negative streak betting or negative progression betting system you do exactly the opposite by increasing the wager size on each subsequent loss. There is an almost endless number of variations of both negative and positive streak betting progressions, each one distinguished by when the progression is invoked, how much the wagers are raised or lowered, and when the progression is terminated.
Stripping (Card Stripping) - Is a shuffling technique which reverses the sequential order of the cards in the deck. For instance, imagine if a dealer took the first card off the top of a deck and placed it on the table and then took the second card off the top and placed it on top of the first card. If this process were continued until the 52nd card was placed on top, then the sequential ordering among the cards would have been completely reversed. This characterizes the basic process of striping. The process described above would be a very fine strip. Often the dealers will speed up the process by rapidly pulling small clumps of cards off the top of the deck rather than a single card at a time. The number of cards in the clumps determine how fine or coarse the striping process is.
Stud Poker - One of the two basic forms of poker game (the other is draw poker) and played with open or exposed cards (up cards) and with one or more concealed cards known as hole cards (down cards).
Suit - Any one of the four types of cards: clubs, diamonds, hearts or spades.
Sulky - (The Sulky) The modern harness racing vehicle (a driving rig) developed from a single-seat. Earlier racing had used carts. In its final form the sulky is little more than a U-shaped shaft mounted on two wheels with a seat at the end of the U.
Super Stud Poker - A five-card poker game known as Caribbean Stud Poker and Casino Stud Poker, but with a Progressive Jackpot. The 'Super' (used in UK casinos) is to say that the game runs a Progressive Jackpot. Tables of the same game are interconnected with other participating casinos, and any player that makes a Royal Flush wins the Jackpot. There are smaller prizes for the top hands such as 'four of a kind' and 'full house'.
Surrender - In blackjack, to give up half your bet for the privilege of not playing out a hand. In roulette, you effectively lose only half on an even-money bet when the ball lands on 0.
System - A method of betting, usually mathematically based, used by a punter or bettor to try to get an advantage. A prominent factor in most systems, is the criteria used to determine when the player's wagers should be raised or lowered. See Systems on this site.
T
TAB - Totalisator Agency Board. The body appointed to regulate off-course betting (bets made by people who are not present at the race track).
Table Hold - The amount of money won by the casino table game from the players during an eight-hour work shift.
Table Stakes - In poker, stakes in which the betting and raising is limited to the amount of money a player has on the table in front of him.
Taking the Odds - There are two fundamental forms of wagering, 'taking the odds' and 'laying the odds'. In most casino games the player is 'taking the odds' by wagering an amount that is less than they will receive if they win, that is; if you wager $1 you would win more than $1. In most forms of sports betting, some odds are so high in favour of the likely winner that winning wagers get paid an amount less than the amount wagered by some percentage, and this is what is meant by 'laying the odds'.
Tapping Out - Losing one's entire gambling bankroll and thus having to stop playing.
Tell Play - Observing the dealer's body language and expressions to determine his hole card. In poker game 'tells' pertain to quirks or readable aspects of a players actions, verbal behavior, or body language that give away information about what cards they are holding.
Third Base - In blackjack, the spot nearest the dealer’s right hand, which will be played last before the dealer’s hand is played.
Third Street - In seven-card stud, the first round of betting is called third street because the players have three cards.
Three-Card Monte - A three-card game similar to Bragg.
Three of a Kind - In poker, three cards of the same rank.
Ticket - A card.
Time Cut (Also, Axe or Collection) - Money charged each player on a time basis by the casino or by the poker room owner. Charge is usually on a 3 minute or an hourly basis.
Toke - Toke is short for 'token'. A tip given to the dealer in the form of money or chips. Unlike tokens, tokes are more specifically the tips that the game dealers receive from the players. A player who is known to toke the dealer heavily is sometimes referred to as a 'George' or a 'Real George'.
Token - The casino own coins used to play slot machines instead of real coins.
Touch Wand - A pointing device used on some video keno machines to select numbers.
Tournament - Basically, a competition game between a group of players over a period of time. For example, in Poker tournaments a bunch of poker players sit down with the same number of chips, and eventually only one player has any chips left. In order to ensure that the event will finish in reasonable time, tournaments institute a schedule by which the blinds and/or antes increase. Tournaments are usually played with chips that have no value outside of the tournament. So a buy-in of $30 might get you $500 in tournament chips to play with, but you can't cash them out in the middle. The winner of a tournament (the last player to bust out) as well as several of the other top finishers are typically awarded prize money according to some predetermined schedule. Tournament details vary widely, but a typical arrangement might include an initial buy-in, a re-buy period during which a player who runs out of tournament chips may buy more, and an opportunity to add on to one's stack after the re-buys have ended. Other details about the structure can vary widely.
Trente et Quarante (Thirty and Forty) - Also called Rouge et Noir or Red and Black, is a game of French origin found in French and other European casinos played with cards and a special table. The game has many similarities to Baccarat. The name Trente et Quarante is derived from the fact that the winning point lies between thirty and forty. There are five possible outcomes: Rouge or Noir, known as the 'Grand Tableau', and Couleur or Inverse, known as the 'Petit Tableau', and a Refait (a tie). The house derives its edge (1.1%) in the event of a tie, when the house takes one half of all the stakes. There is also an insurance bet option against the 'tie' outcome.
Trips - Three cards of the same rank.
Tronc - A designated box for collecting the tips for the dealers given by players when they win.
True Odds - The real odds of something happening. Actual odds taking into account the casino edge. The ratio of the number of times one event will occur to the number of times that it will not. The odds posted in a casino are usually not the true odds.
U
Underlay - A bad or unfavorable bet. An event that has more money bet on its happening than can be justified by the probability of it happening.
Unit (Betting Units) - Technical term used to express the smallest amount of money used in wagering without specifying the actual Dollar or other currency amount. The player's actual 'chip' bet may be $1, $5, $25, $100 or other value. However, for purposes of simplifying gambling related calculations, the wager is specified as simply one betting unit or one chip.
Up Card (Upcard) - The face up card of the dealer's initial hand in blackjack. Standard casino rules require the dealers to deal their own opening hands with one card face-up and one card face-down. The card that is dealt face-up is the dealers 'up card'. The card the is dealt face-down is said to be the dealers 'hole card'.
V
Videomat Casino - Is a casino that offers automatic games only, that do not require a dealer or a croupier, such as slot machines and electronic touch-bet roulette. They are normally open 24 hours or from 10am daily, and there is usually an in-house bar or snack bar.
Vig., Vigorish - The casino edge, fee or commission taken by the house.
Viking Poker - A poker name commonly used in some European casinos, is the equivalent of Caribbean Stud Poker.
VIP - A Very Important Person. Usually a big bettor or a high roller.
VLT - Video Lottery Terminal
W
Wager - Any Bet.
Washing - To show that they are not taking any chips with them, croupiers always rub their hands over, known as 'washing', before leaving the table. See also 'Card Washing'
Web Wallet - A secure and convenient software tool for managing your online transactions, such as depositing money with online casinos or making a withdrawal from your balance.
Whale - A player who makes extremely large wagers. Unlike high rollers who consistently wager $100 or more per round, whales are typically those who make wagers amounting to thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per round.
White meat - Profit.
Wild Card - A joker or other card that can be used as any other card to complete your hand in card games.
Wild Royal Flush - A Royal Flush that makes use of a wild card.
Wired cards (also, Back-to-Back) - In poker, a pair, trips, or four of a kind dealt consecutively or back-to-back in a hand, usually in a stud hand starting with the first card.
Withdrawal - A request you make to receive money from your account.
Wong, Wonging, Wonger - (named after Stanford Wong) In Blackjack, to count the cards dealt at a particular table and to then join play only when the count indicates the game has swung to the player's advantage. The term has been expanded to include playing in favorable situations in a number of other games.
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