Pai Gow Strategy

Pai Gow is all about setting your hand, so it obviously becomes the only part of the game where strategy is called into play.

Like blackjack strategy, pai gow strategy will assist you as you attempt to not only beat the dealer’s hands, but avoid making the most costly mistakes. There are different tiers of strategy, for now we’ll start with the easiest to remember.

First, resist the temptation to make one powerhouse hand with your five-card hand, and then just leave the “leftovers” for your second hand. This will probably only backfire on you, since you have to win both to win the hand. You’ll need strength distributed evenly between both hands if you want to have a chance. If you’re sitting on two-pair, do yourself a favor and break those pairs up.

Second, while you’ll want to break up two-pair, it’s not a great idea to break up three of a kind. What does that get you? A decent pair for one hand and a lonely card that ain’t worth much stuck in the other hand. The one exception to this is aces. Putting an ace-high into your two-card hand while a pair of aces sits pretty on the other side is smart strategy for winning both.

Piggybacking on this, it’s important to realize that this isn’t regular free poker, meaning high hands aren’t going to be needed that much more than a simple two-pair or three of a kind to take the game. Just look at the odds. So taking this into account, don’t hesitate to separate four of a kind…you’ll almost guarantee yourself the win. Same goes for a full house, break it up.

Careful, though, not to separate flushes or straights, unless doing so benefits your pairing situation. Otherwise, you’re stuck with a bunch of runner cards that suddenly don’t have as much in common with the rest of your hand that you need them to. If breaking them up doesn’t give you a pair in one place, stick with the flush and take your chances with the garbage in the other hand…hopefully you at least have something higher than a nine to work with. To try out any of this pai gow strategy, we recommend that you visit GoldenCasino today and receive an exclusive $500 Bonus.

And finally, don’t be stupid. If you are playing in a pai gow poker tournament, the one cardinal rule of stupidity is when you let your two-card hand have a higher value than your five-card hand. Dumb…it’s called a foul. It’ll probably happen to you by accident as some point or another, but if it happens more than once, you have nobody to blame but yourself.