Pai Gow Poker Analysis

In Pai Gow Poker, the house advantage is determined in part by your ability to set hands, but more so by how much action you bank. In January of 2014, I intend to post some pai gow poker strategy. Until then, the tables below illustrate the probability of each conceivable event as well as the expected value in four different ways, depending on whether you're using the house method or the best strategy and whether you're banking or the dealer is banking.

The expected value for each of the four scenarios is summarized in the table below. The "difference" row and column reveal that banking raises expected value by 2.47% compared to not banking. On the other hand, the difference between the house strategy and the theoretically best plan, which I'm sure no one knows, is 0.21%.



The likelihood of forming each given poker hand is shown in the table below. These probabilities take into account all seven cards, regardless of how the player may play the hand.