Start with the split, because splitting seven cards correctly into a strong five-card hand and a valid two-card hand is the entire skill of this game.
Pai Gow Poker was invented by Sam Torosian and Fred Wolf at the Bell Card Club in California in 1985, adapted from the Chinese domino game Pai Gow. The poker version uses a standard 52-card deck plus one joker. Each player and the dealer receive seven cards face down. You split those seven cards into a five-card "high hand" and a two-card "low hand." The five-card hand must outrank the two-card hand in poker terms. Your five-card hand is compared to the dealer's five-card hand; your two-card hand is compared to the dealer's two-card hand. Win both to win the bet, lose both to lose the bet, win one and lose one to push. The house wins all ties.
The 5% commission applies to winning bets: if you win £20, the house takes £1. This commission structure, applied to your wins but not your pushes, is the source of the house edge. With no commission, a player banking against the dealer's house way would have a 1.30% advantage; with the 5% commission, the edge flips to the house at 2.84% when you play as a regular player against a dealer banker, in our Pai Gow analysis.
The House Way: What It Is and When to Follow It
Every UK casino running Pai Gow Poker publishes a house way, the algorithm the dealer uses to set their own hand. The house way exists so that the dealer operates mechanically and consistently, removing discretion from the process. Players are always permitted to request the house way and set their own hand according to it.
Following the house way exactly is a reasonable default strategy. It's optimal or near-optimal in most hand configurations. The cases where optimal splitting departs from the house way are mostly in complex holdings like two pairs and full houses. For example, many house way rules on a full house will always split the full house, placing the pair in the low hand and the three of a kind in the high hand. Optimal strategy sometimes keeps the full house intact in the high hand, depending on the supporting cards. These edge cases generate the 0.21 percentage point difference between house way play (2.84%) and optimal play (2.63%), a modest but real improvement.
The practical approach for a new player: use the house way as your default, understand the principle that you want both hands to be as strong as possible while keeping the five-card hand higher-ranked than the two-card hand, and focus on the split decisions for two pairs and full houses, where the decision is most consequential.
Key Splitting Rules and the Joker
The joker in Pai Gow Poker is semi-wild. It completes any straight, any flush, or any straight flush. Outside of those situations, it's treated as an ace. This means a joker in your hand gives you an extra ace unless you can slot it into a straight or flush, at which point it becomes the missing card. The joker is not a full wild card: it isn't, and treating it as one leads to sub-optimal splits.
No pairs: place the two highest-ranking cards in the two-card hand and the remaining five cards in the five-card hand. One pair: always place the pair in the five-card hand and your two highest remaining cards in the two-card hand. Two pair: this is the genuinely complex decision. If one pair is aces, split them. Otherwise, the correct play depends on what other supporting cards you have. The general principle is to split two pairs when you can make a credible two-card hand (a pair) without sacrificing the strength of your five-card hand too severely. Three pair: put the highest pair in the two-card hand, the other two pairs in the five-card hand.
Flushes and straights with a pair: keep the flush or straight in the five-card hand and place the pair in the two-card hand if the pair is strong enough (nines or better is a reasonable default). If the pair is weak and the supporting cards in the five-card hand are strong enough without the pair, keeping the flush or straight intact and placing your two best remaining cards in the low hand may be better. This is where the house way reference card at the table is most useful.
The Banking Option and Its Edge Implications
The most important strategic feature of Pai Gow Poker is the banking option. At most tables, each player in turn may elect to bank. When you bank, all other players at the table bet against you rather than against the house. The dealer acts as a co-banker, handling the mechanical dealing. You must have sufficient chips to cover all other players' bets. You apply the house way to your hand (some casinos require this when banking; others allow you to set your own hand as banker).
The advantage of banking is that the house edge structure reverses. When you bank, ties go to you rather than to the dealer. The 5% commission is paid on your net win across all bets rather than on each individual win. Our analysis puts the player banker edge under optimal strategy at approximately 0.04% in the player's favour, essentially a near-zero edge game when you bank. Even under house way strategy as banker, the edge is only 0.25% against you, compared to 2.84% as a regular player.
The practical implementation on UK floors varies. Some rooms rotate the bank offer clockwise. Others allow any player to bank on request. It's worth asking the floor supervisor about the specific banking policy before your session at any London casino. At venues like the Hippodrome, where multiple games run simultaneously and table staffing varies, the banking mechanics can differ from table to table.
The push rate deserves its own emphasis. Approximately 40% of hands in Pai Gow Poker resolve as pushes: no money changes hands. This has the practical effect of reducing your hourly cost by roughly 40% compared to a game with the same edge but no pushes. At £20 per hand and 25 hands per hour, only 15 hands per hour resolve as wins or losses. Expected loss at 2.84% of £20 per hand: approximately £8.52 per hour before accounting for the commission structure. The effective hourly cost is among the lowest in the carnival pit at most stake levels, purely because of the push rate.
Practise the split decisions at the casino poker trainers before your first live session. The two-pair and full house splits in particular benefit from drilling, since they're the hands where the house way and optimal play sometimes diverge and where mechanical hesitation at a live table is most visible.
Key numbers
| Scenario | House edge |
|---|---|
| Regular player vs dealer banker (house way) | 2.84% |
| Regular player vs dealer banker (optimal) | 2.51% |
| Player banker vs regular players (house way) | 0.25% against player |
| Player banker vs regular players (optimal) | ~0.04% (near zero) |
| Commission-free Pai Gow (no 5%) | 1.30% against banker |
| Push rate | ~40% |
| Hands per hour (live table) | 25-30 |
Sources: our Pai Gow analysis Poker, Hippodrome Casino table games, UKGC safer gambling guidance.