Pai Gow, the Chinese poker game

The Pai Gow Poker history, emerged from ancient Chinese civilization and history. Thousands of years ago, the classic Chinese Pai Gow game was the first game played with domino pieces. Over the centuries the game evolved and became one of the main casino games, popular all over the world.

Most of the Pai Gow growing popularity, that the game knew in the last half century, was gain thanks to Fred Wolf and Sam Torosian. The two American casino owners invented and implemented into their casinos the Pai Gow poker game that we all enjoy today in every casino.

The Pai Gow game is played with a standard 52-card deck, plus a single wild card, at a table of six players and one dealer. The wild card, also known as joker can only be used to complete a Straight, a Flush and a Straight Flush, or can be used as an ace.

Every player tries to create two poker hands out of the seven cards hand dealted by the dealer: a five-card poker hand (also called "bottom" or "high"), and a two-card poker hand (also called “on top” or “small”). The “high” hand must have a higher value than the “small” hand. The objective of the Pai Gow is that both of your hands to be better than both of the dealer's or any other player’s hands.

The winning hand combination in Pai Gow, in descending order are:  5 Aces (including a joker), Royal Flush, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind, Flush, Straight, Three of a Kind, Two Pair, Ace, King, Queen, Jack. If the player's hand and the dealer's hand have the same value, the dealer wins the bet.

If you are a Pai Gow fan, you can enjoy the game at major online casinos like This is Vegas, Europa Casino and Sun Palace.