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Free Pai Gow Poker

Seven cards against the dealer, played for chips that are worth nothing, with every split you make checked against the house way.

Play chips

1,000

No real money, no prizes, nothing to buy.

53 cards · shuffled every hand

Dealer

You

Pick a bet and deal.

Session coach

Last round

Nothing played yet. After each of your hands the coach says what the round cost and what decided it.

Decide the cost before you start

Gambling is entertainment with a price, like a concert ticket. The useful question is not how much you might win but how much the evening is allowed to cost. Pick that number first, and treat reaching it as the end of the session. You can set one below and the coach will hold you to it.

Next bet

25 chips at a 2.67% house edge: an expected cost of 0.7 chips.

This table is for practice and entertainment only. How to keep gambling safe

House way coach

The dealer never chooses: a fixed rule set, the house way, sets every dealer hand. After each hand the coach shows how it would have set yours and why. The cards decide whether a hand wins. The split is the part you control.

Cost of a 25 bet
−0.7
About 2.7% a hand, set the house way
A win pays
23.75
25 less 5% commission
Hands that push
About 41%
One hand each: the bet comes back
Win or lose
29% / 30%
Copies go to the dealer

The house way is a strong, simple strategy, and it is what these figures assume. It is not always the best possible split of a given seven cards. Price every legal split of a hand in the trainer

This session

Hands played
0
Hands set the house way
None yet
Of the hands you set yourself
Net chips
0
Expected at the edge
0
0 bet at about 2.7%
Pushes
None yet
Commission paid
0

Expected is the house edge taken on the chips you have bet, assuming every hand is set the house way. About 54% of that edge is the commission on wins and the rest is copies going to the dealer. Pushes are why this game moves slowly: a short session swings less than most table games, and still well away from the expected figure.

Built by Alexander Korsager · last updated October 3, 2026 · corrections

House edge with every hand set the house way, simulated
2.7%
Of hands push, and the bet comes back
41%
Commission taken from every winning bet
5%
Of the edge is that commission. The rest is copies
54%

01 / 03

One split, checked against the house way

Pai Gow Poker gives you seven cards and one decision: which two go in the low hand, leaving the other five as the high hand.

Both of your hands have to beat the dealer's for the bet to be paid, and both have to lose for it to be lost. Everything else is a push, and about 41% of hands end that way, which is why this is one of the slowest, lowest-variance games on a casino floor.

How a hand ends, set the house way
Both hands beat the dealer's: the bet is paid
29%
One hand each: a push
41%
Both hands lose: the bet is lost
30%

Shares of 600,000 simulated hands, to the nearest whole percent. A push returns the bet.

The dealer does not get a decision.

A fixed rule set called the house way sets every dealer hand, and it is also a strong, simple way to set your own. After each hand the coach shows how the house way would have split your cards and why, and counts how often your settings matched it. It is honest about the limits: the house way is not always the best possible split, and set that way the game still costs about 2.7% of every bet.

7 cards, split the house way

  • High hand, 5 cards

    Pair of kings

    Low hand, 2 cards

    Pair of 7s

    Two pair with kings on top is always split, so the 7s go in the low hand.

  • High hand, 5 cards

    Ace high

    Low hand, 2 cards

    Queen-10

    No pair: the highest card stays in the high hand and the second and third highest go in the low hand.

The dealer's cards are set by the same rules, and the coach shows this for your own hand after every deal.

02 / 03

Rules at this table

What a winning bet is paid

Bet 100Wins 1 to 1Less 5%Paid 95

A winning bet pays 1 to 1 less a 5% commission.

What the house edge is made of
The commission on every win
54%
Copies going to the dealer
46%

A copy is an exact tie on either hand, and it goes to the dealer, which is why slightly more hands lose than win. Simulated shares.

  • One 53-card pack: a standard deck and one joker, shuffled before every hand.
  • The joker is not fully wild. It completes a straight, a flush or a straight flush, and otherwise it is an ace.
  • You and the dealer get seven cards each. The dealer's stay face down until you have set your hand.
  • Split your cards into a five-card high hand and a two-card low hand. The high hand must rank at least as high as the low hand, and the table will not accept a setting that breaks this.
  • The low hand is two cards, so it can only be a pair or a high card. Five-card hands rank the usual poker way, with five aces (four aces and the joker) on top.
  • The dealer sets by the house way. The higher high hand wins that comparison and the higher low hand wins the other.
  • Win both and the bet is paid. Lose both and the bet is lost. Win one and lose one and it is a push: the bet comes back.
  • An exact tie on either hand is a copy, and a copy goes to the dealer.
  • There are no side bets and no option to bank at this table.

  • Bets run from 5 to 500 chips a hand.

    1 to 7
    Choose a card for the low hand
    Enter
    Deal, or set the hand

FAQ

Is this Pai Gow Poker game played for real money?
No. The table uses play chips that have no value, cannot be bought, and cannot be cashed out or exchanged for anything. If you run out, you are handed another stack for free. There is no account and nothing to download.
How should I set a Pai Gow Poker hand?
The short version of the house way covers most hands. With no pair, keep the highest card in the high hand and play the next two in the low hand. With one pair, keep the pair in the high hand and play the two highest other cards low. With two pair, split them when the higher pair is jacks or better, and otherwise keep them together only if an ace (or, with small pairs, a king) can lead the low hand. With three pair, the highest pair goes low. The coach states the rule that applied after every hand. It grades the setting, not the outcome: a hand set the house way can still lose.
What is the house edge in Pai Gow Poker?
Set the house way at this table, about 2.7% of each bet. Around 29% of hands win, 30% lose and 41% push. The edge has two sources. About 54% of it is the 5% commission taken from every win, and the rest is copies: exact ties that go to the dealer, which is why slightly more hands lose than win. These figures are simulated, not exact, and they are for this table's rules and house way.
Why do so many hands push?
Because the bet is only settled when one side wins both hands. A strong high hand usually leaves a weak low hand behind it, and the dealer's cards are in the same position, so the two comparisons often go opposite ways. About 41% of hands push here. That makes the game low in variance: chips move slowly in both directions. It does not make the game free: a bet of 100 still costs about 2.70 on average.

How this game works

Every hand is dealt from one 53-card pack, shuffled in your browser with a Fisher-Yates shuffle so that every ordering is equally likely. Nothing about the deal depends on your bet, your balance or your results. Hands are ranked by the same evaluator the Pai Gow Poker hand-setting trainer uses, including the joker's limited role and five aces as the top hand.

The house way here follows a published casino house way, the same source the trainer cites, written out as one rule per kind of hand and tested rule by rule. The joker is counted as an ace whenever it is not completing a straight or a flush, so a joker beside an ace is set as a pair of aces. When a straight or flush is possible, the low hand gets the two best cards that still leave any complete straight or flush in the high hand. One written exception in the source, for an ace held with a high pair alongside a straight or flush, is not applied, because its wording does not settle which cards move.

The house edge, and the shares of hands that win, lose and push, are simulated, because the game is too large to count exactly. 300,000 pairs of seven-card hands were dealt from a seeded shuffle, both set by the house way, and each pair played both ways round, for 600,000 hands in all. The tallies of that run are fixed in the game's code and a test re-runs it and requires the same result. The same test holds a second, independent run to those figures within a set tolerance, which is why the edge is printed to one decimal place and the shares as whole percents.

The expected figures in the panels are that edge taken on the chips you bet. They assume every hand is set the house way. The coach compares your setting with the house way and does not price the difference in chips; the trainer linked above does that for any single hand.

Limits

  • The house way is a rule of thumb that is strong and easy to follow. For some hands another legal split does slightly better, so matching it is not the same as playing perfectly.
  • House ways differ a little from casino to casino, and so does the edge. The figures here are for the rule set dealt at this table.
  • Some casinos deal a commission-free version with other rules, let players take turns banking, or add side bets. This table has the 5% commission and none of the rest.
  • The edge is simulated and quoted to one decimal place. It is an estimate with a small sampling error, not an exact count.
  • Play chips do not feel like money. Decisions that are easy here are harder with a real stake on the table.

This is a practice game for adults. It has no real-money play and links to none. Pai Gow Poker played for money has a house edge on every hand, however it is set, and no amount of practice removes it.

Gambling can cause serious harm. The National Problem Gambling Helpline is free, confidential and open 24/7, call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738), or chat at ncpgambling.org/chat.

03 / 03

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