Strategy

How to Play Pai Gow Poker. Pai Gow poker is played with a standard English deck of 52 cards plus the joker, or bug. The joker can only be used as an ace or a card that completes a straight or flush. Players and the dealer receive seven cards they place into two hands: five cards and two cards. The following basic playing strategy for Pai Gow will give you some pointers on how to form the two hands. Start with step #1 and work your way down the basic strategy chart until you find your hand. PAI GOW POKER BASIC PLAYING STRATEGY. Play These Dominoes as the High Hand. Step #1 King hand or one of the pairs (rank 2-12). PAI GOW POKER STRATEGY CALCULATOR. Select 7 player cards. You can make the card selections by either clicking on the deck of small cards or by entering the cards manually using the text boxes. The text box entry is in the form 2D = 2 of diamonds, TS = ten of spades, KH = king of hearts, etc. Click on a large card to clear (and replace) the. Online Pai Gow Poker guide. Pai Gow is an unusual card game that can best be described as like Blackjack for Poker players - you play against the dealer, but have to form two Poker hands. Although simple, there is plenty scope for players who want to develop an optimal playing strategy. In conclusion, Pai Gow Poker is a fast-paced style of poker created in 1985 by Sam Torosian; the game derives from the Chinese domino game Pai Gow. After enjoying relatively steady, but not incredible, growth early on, Pai Gow Poker exploded in popularity, and is now a fixture of countless casinos and betting establishments around the globe.

If you play the right strategy then, along with video poker, Blackjack can offer some of the most player friendly odds that you can find in online casinos. However many players give little thought to optimal strategy and often play using their instincts in ways that greatly increase the amount that the house is expected to win so that they would have a far better chance of coming out ahead if they played pure luck games. Many people have the mistaken assumption from watching films such as 21 that the clever player can beat the casino, even online. In Blackjack it is possible with optimal strategy and card counting to find situations where the player has an edge over the house. In reality though in most casinos cards are shuffled too frequently for the player to be able to ever have an exploitable edge. With online shuffling it is exceedingly rare to find situations in which the player has an edge over the house but when you gamble you do generally expect to concede a small edge to the house in exchange for the chances to win and the entertainment that you get from your play.

Pai Gow Poker Rules Strategy

The simplest blackjack strategy focuses on when you should hit or stand based on basic odds. Since you can only see half the dealer’s hand, most players automatically assume that the face down card (also called the “hole card”) is a 10. This gives you a hypothetical hand total to beat. Another important factor to consider when deciding whether to hit or stand is at what hand total the dealer will stand. The most common house rules dictate that the dealer stands at either a soft or hard 17. Most basic blackjack strategies encourage players to hit until they also reach the dealer’s stand point, since you know the dealer will hit to beat anything lower.

Live blackjack involves a fair bit of memorization, but if you need some help when playing online, it’s easy to find charts that will advise you on when it’s best to hit or stand. These are called “cheat sheets,” and while they are not allowed at most live casinos they’re easy to access online. Below is a basic chart created for tables using the most common house rules:

Trainer

S = Stand
H = Hit
Dh = Double when possible, hit otherwise
Ds = Double when possible, stand otherwise
SP = Split
SU = Surrender when possible, hit otherwise

Pai

As you can see, there are some scenarios in which you should always choose one move, regardless of the dealer’s hypothetical hand. For example, you will always stand with a hard hand total of 17 or more. Likewise, you should always hit with a hard hand of less than 8. Remember that it’s not possible to bust by hitting with a hand of less than 11, so when doubling isn’t possible hitting is the obvious move. Splitting is also given with Aces and 8s, and doubling down is almost always a good move with an initial hand of 10 or 11.

Once you get the blackjack basics down, you can tweak your strategy minutely to improve your odds based on variations in house rules or the number of decks that are being used. Speaking of the number of decks, you might be wondering when we are going to talk about card counting. Learning to count cards would be the next obvious step in strategy for live blackjack players, but online it’s virtually impossible to count cards. You can always find “cheat sheets” available online for which ever rule variation you are playing and most of these are available on the www.wizardofodds.com site.

Most modern blackjack games use four to eight decks (called a “shoe”) to discourage card counting, but online casinos take their precautions one step further by usually shuffle up after every hand. Even online casinos that offer token penetration – where they wait a set amount of time before shuffling the decks again – draw from so many decks to begin with that the fluctuations are still too large to give you a realistic card counting advantage.

In the past the combination of small house advantage and generous sign up and on-going bonuses meant that players could actually make a significant income with very little risk from exploiting bonuses through Blackjack. Now many casinos exclude playing blackjack during a bonus or heavily discount blackjack play in meeting play through requirements. As a result these are important points to remember when playing blackjack online:-

  • Will playing blackjack disqualify me from a bonus I am playing through?
  • If I want to play online Blackjack then I either need to find a blackjack friendly bonus, not claim the bonus before playing or make sure my play (such as maximum bet size) fits in with the bonus terms
  • Choose player friendly variations and adapt strategy to the variation you play ie print out and use the right cheat sheet!

Did you know that there is a skill involved in playing video poker?

Pai gow poker strategy chart printable

That’s right. It turns out that there is always only one mathematically correct way to play any given hand in video poker and a skilled video poker player will, in the long run, achieve a higher payback percentage on any video poker game than a player who guesses about how to play their hands.

So, how do you become a skilled video poker player who knows the correct way to play any given video poker hand? Well, there are two good ways to do it.

Pai Gow Poker Strategy Chart Blackjack

1 – Practice your video poker skills with a software training program that will you teach you how to play your hands correctly. Not only will a training program provide you with hours of fun, but it can more than pay for itself by teaching you the best way to play your hand in any given situation in order to lower the casino advantage over you.

We sell the two best video poker software programs available on the market today and we also sell them at discounted prices, starting at just $24.95. For more information, just go to: https://www.americancasinoguidebook.com/video-poker-software.html

Pai Gow Poker Trainer

2 – Use our FREE video poker strategy charts to learn to play like a pro! Just download them below and print them out for free!

As noted above, video poker is one of the few casino games that has an element of skill. This means that a player who knows how to properly play their hands will, in the long run, get a higher payback percentage on their video poker games than a player who simply guesses how to play each hand.

Pai Gow Poker Strategy Chart Wizard

Keep in mind that there is only one mathematically correct way to play any dealt video poker hand. While some hands are easy to know how to play correctly, there are some hands where the correct play isn’t that simple. In order to know the correct way to play your hands you really need a strategy chart to show you how to do it.

We have two free video poker charts that will give you an excellent simple strategy for both 9/6 and 8/5 video poker machines. These charts are based on computer simulations of millions of video poker hands and they will give you an almost perfect strategy for playing any hand.

How to use the charts – Both charts will have a list of all the possible hands you can be dealt and each hand will be numbered. The closer the hand is to number one, then that would be the correct way to play that given hand.

As an example: You are dealt (8h, 8s, 7c, 9d, 10h). Should you keep the two eights? Or, go for the open-ended straight? Well, when playing Jacks or Better, the mathematically correct play would be to hold the pair of eights. And, how do we know that? Just by looking at the 9/6 chart you can see that hand #20 is a “four card open-ended straight with no high cards” and hand #16 is a low pair (2’s through 10’s). So, since 16 is lower than 20, the proper way to play the hand is to keep the pair of eights.

To read more about video poker, please visit our video poker articles section.

Listed below are links for video poker strategy charts both 9/6 and 8/5 video poker pay tables. Just print them out and take them with you to the casino when you play. By using these charts you will always know how to properly play your hand in any given situation. Have fun!

Pai Gow Poker Rules

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