How to Play Strong Hands in Pai Gow Poker

Published: April 10, 2014

In pai gow poker, playing weaker hands tends to be very easy. If you have a high card hand, for example, then you always just put your second and third highest cards in the low hand. If you have a single pair, then you put your highest two cards that aren't paired in the low hand. A simple points system can help you learn to play two pair, and playing with three of a kind is just like playing with a pair except you put an ace in your low hand if you have three aces. Playing with stronger hands can be more difficult, and here we want to give you some ideas on how to handle those situations.

Suppose you have three of a kind with a pair. You're always going to put the pair in the low hand no matter what. If you have three of a kind with an additional three of a kind, then the right way to play is to make a pair from the higher three of a kind and put that in your low hand. With four of a kind, things get a little hairy.

Your options with four of a kind are going to be whether to split them up into two different pairs or not. You're always going to break up your four of a kind of it's in queens or higher. If you can't put an ace-high hand in the low, then you'll split up nines through jacks. Absent a king-high or ace-high for the low, you'll also split sevens or eights. You need at least queen high to keep from splitting your sixes, and you need at least ten high to keep from splitting your fives. You will never split fours or lower, so those hands are easy enough to play.

If you have a straight or flush available with a single pair, you're almost always going to just play it in a way that gives you the best low hand possible while maintaining a straight or flush in the high hand. However, there is one extremely important exception to this, and it constitutes one of the most difficult cases to come up in pai gow poker. If you can put AK in the low hand, then you should do so even if it breaks up the flush or straight possibility as long as you can play a pair of nines or higher in the high hand.