Est.: Aug. 28, 2007
Updated: Dec. 12, 2009

Pai Gow in Macau

Last update: August 22, 2007

Introduction

Pai gow is surprisingly hard to find in Macau. I would be very confident in saying that there are more pai gow games in Las Vegas or Atlantic City than Macau. Your odds of finding pai gow will be best at the SJM casinos. I know that the Lisboa has at least one table.

Macau Pai Gow Etiquette

There are some significant differences between the way pai gow is played in Macau, as compared to the United States, as follows.

• The game is played standing up around a table the size of a pool table.
• The dealer will set aside five hands, and put a marker numbered 1 to 5 on each one. The player may choose which hand to bet on. The player making the largest wager on each hand gets to set it.
• If there is only one player at the table, then he will play against the dealer. Otherwise, with two or more players, one player will bank (on a rotating basis), and the rest will play against him. The house does not play a hand with two or more players.
• Here is the most interesting rule, the player may not look at his tiles! He must set them only by feeling the dots with his fingers, like braille.
• The player must pick up his tiles one at a time.

Here the story of how I figured out the Macau pai gow procedure. At about 3 AM early one morning I approached an empty pai gow table at the Lisboa, and proceeded to play against the dealer. I played as I normally do in Las Vegas, turning the tiles on their side on the table, and then move them around to see what looks like the best play.

As in common in Macau, players hate to open up an empty table. As soon as I starting playing, other players jumped in. For about 15 minutes everything was going fine, until I heard another player obviously complaining in Chinese about something I was doing. They had to summon a translator, who told me I was not allowed to set the tiles on the table, I had to do it in my hands.

Fine, I thought. It was uncomfortable to bend over anyway to set my tiles on the table. As I mentioned earlier, you have to play standing up. About five minutes later another player complained about some other breach of etiquette I was making. The translator had to be summoned again, who told me I couldn't pick up the tiles all at one time. I had to pick them up one at a time.

Okay. Seemed kind of ridiculous, but it was no big inconvenience. The next hand I carefully picked them up one at a time, and counted in Chinese from one to four as I did. I did not see any upside to this rule, which only slowed down the game. However, when in Rome....

A few hands later another Chinese player lodged yet another complaint about something I was doing. Summon the translator again. This time he told me I'm not allowed to LOOK at my tiles. Although I knew what the answer would be, I asked "how to you expect me to set them if I can't see them." He said that I would have to use my fingers, and feel the dimples, to know what I had. I've seen some Chinese players in Las Vegas do this, as well as the players in front of me.

So that pretty much put the nix on that game. I have never once tried to play pai gow blind. With such a hostile audience, I was not about to start at that moment. I recognized an English-speaking supervisor from playing blackjack earlier. When I questioned him about the reason for the playing blind rule, he just said that is the way pai gow has been played there for many years. That is always a frustrating answer for me, but you get it a lot when you ask any 'why' question in China. If you do, don't question it, but accept it as a Chinese thing.

Rules

Pai gow is played with a set of 32 dominos displayed below. Notice that some dominos appear once and some twice.

There is no significance to the color of the dots.

The Rules

In the Macau version of pai gow, the players only play against each other. The dealer is there to host the game, and collects a 5% commission from all wins for this service. One player will bank against all other players. The opportunity to bank is offered in turn to each player, and any player may decline the option.

The game is played with a set of 32 dominos, three dice, and a dice shaker. Play begins with all players making a wager. As the players decide how much to bet the dealer mixes up the dominos and puts them in 8 neat stacks of 4. Then the dice are rolled to determine who gets the first stack and then proceeds counter-clockwise. After the dice are exposed the player may not change his bet. Each player is given one stack of 4 dominos, which they are to arrange into two groups of two.

Each pair of dominos has a ranking. The player must decide how to arrange his dominos into the strongest possible pairs. Sometimes the choice is obvious but often a decision must be made whether to have a strong hand and a weak hand or two more balanced hands. At most there will be three possible and viable ways to play the hand. After a decision is reached the player should lay the dominos face down with the higher pair laying horizontally and the lower pair vertically. Only after all players have set their hands can the banker examine and set his dominos.

After all dominos have been arranged the banker and player will turn over their hands. Each player will in turn compare his hands to those of the banker. If the player wins both hands his bet pays even money less a 5% commission. If the player loses both he loses his entire wager. If the hands split, one win and one loss, then the bet is a push. After all bets have been settled the banker pays a 5% commission on the net win, if there was one.

Usually the dealer will let the player may prepay the 5% commission. For example if you bet $100 you may put out an additional $5 as the commission, should you lose. Mathematically speaking, this is equivalent to paying a commission of 1/21 of your total bet, rather than 1/20. This lowers the house edge by about 0.07%, and is definitely advised.

Ranking

How the hands are ranked is the complicated and there is no easy way to memorize the order. The highest hands are the matched pairs as follows. The highest pair, known as the supreme pair consists of the two wild dominos. Each of these wild dominos, known as "gee" may count as either 3 or 6 points if used individually. The Chinese name for the supreme pair is "Gee Joon" which is also the name of a restaurant in Binion's Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas.

Following in rank are certain non-matching pairs.

Next in rank are special combinations known as Wongs. These combinations inlude either the 2 or 12 point domino and any 9 point domino.

Following the Wongs are other special combinations known as Gongs. These combinations inlude either the 2 or 12 point domino and any 8 point domino.

Finally, if a pair, Wong, or Gong can not be formed then the hand is ranked according to the terminal digit of the total pip value of dots on the dominos. For example a hand consisting of a 12 and 7 dominos would have a total of 19 spots for the highest possible value of 9. The highest among these hands are the 6+6 and 1+1 dominos combined with a 7, known as a "high nine" because of their composition with one of the two highest individual dominos. In the event the player and banker have the same point total then the highest ranking domino in each will will be used to break the tie, the high domino wins. In the event that the high dominos are equal then the tie shall go to the banker. Note that the second highest dominos are not used to break the tie. There is an exception, in the event of a 0-0 copy then the tie will go to the banker. The following list shows every domino in order of their rank.

Note that while the two wild dominos together are the highest ranking pair (the supreme pair) individually they are the lowest in rank.

House Edge

In a one on one game, assuming that both player and banker follow the same strategy, the house edge against the player is 2.44%, and against the banker is 0.53%. The house edge will fall on the banker as the number of players goes up, because the commission is applied to the net win.

For more information on Pai Gow, please visit my companion site, Wizard of Odds.

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