Pai gow poker uses a deck of 53 cards (joker for aces, straights, and flushes). You are dealt seven cards that you must separate into a five-card hand and a two-card hand. The only restriction is that your five-card hand must have higher poker value than your two-card hand. Pai gow poker is one-on-one, player against banker. You can be player or you can be banker, being banker is better. If banker’s five-card hand has equal or higher poker value than player’s five-card hand, and banker’s two-card hand has equal or higher poker value than player’s two-card hand, banker wins the bet. If player’s five-card hand has higher poker value than banker’s five-card hand, and player’s two-card hand has higher poker value than banker’s two-card hand, player wins. If banker’s five-card hand is higher than player’s five-card hand but player’s two-card hand is higher than banker’s two-card hand, no money changes hands. Same if player’s five card hand is higher than banker’s, but banker’s two-card hand is higher than player’s. From these rules you can see that the banker’s edge is that the banker wins copies” -- situations where the hands have equal poker value. For example, banker’s ace-high straight beats player’s ace-high straight.

by Stanford Wong, 160 pages, english