Pai gow (pronounced pie-gow) poker is believed to be a combination of American poker and the Chinese domino game pai gow. It’s thought that the game originated in the late 1800s when the Chinese helped build the U.S. railroads.

Pai gow poker is played at a table very similar to a blackjack table. The image below shows a typical pai gow poker layout. There’s a great deal of interaction among the players at a pai gow poker table, so in that way it’s very similar to blackjack. Each player tries to beat the dealer. Players often interact with each other, creating an atmosphere of “us versus them.”

Pai gow poker requires fewer decisions per hour than almost any other game in the casino. This means that over a long period of gambling you’ll lose less playing pai gow poker than in most other casino games. In fact, the only table game that is slower is Caribbean stud. On the average, pai gow poker has about twenty-four hands played in an hour. For comparison, the average for blackjack is sixty hands per hour.

The house advantage for pai gow poker is 2.3 percent. By way of comparison, in blackjack the house advantage is 0.5 percent.

Remember that the house advantage is a percentage of each bet you make that the casino takes in, kind of like a tax the casino collects to let you play the game. The casino claims this tax by paying your winning bets at less than true odds. On average, in pai gow poker, for every $100 wagered the casino pays out $97.70 and takes in $2.30.