PHDREAM Pai Gow Poker: High Hand, Low Hand & Push Rules

Pai gow poker splits one hand into two instead of playing a single hand against the dealer, which is the part that trips up players used to blackjack or standard poker.

What Pai Gow Poker Is

Pai gow poker deals seven cards to each player from a 53-card deck — a standard deck plus one joker. Every player, and the dealer, arranges their seven cards into two separate hands: a five-card hand and a two-card hand.

Element	Detail
Deck	53 cards: a standard 52-card deck plus one joker
Cards dealt	Seven per player, split into two hands
High hand	Five cards, ranked by standard poker hand rankings
Low hand	Two cards, the best possible being a pair of Aces

Pai Gow Poker Rules: Setting Your Two Hands

The core rule of pai gow poker is that the five-card high hand must rank higher than the two-card low hand. A hand that breaks this rule is disqualified, whatever the seven cards could have made arranged a different way.

1. Look at all seven cards and identify the strongest possible five-card poker hand.
2. Set the two remaining cards as the low hand.
3. Confirm the five-card hand outranks the two-card hand — two Kings in the low hand, for instance, needs a high hand that beats a pair of Kings.
4. Present both hands face down until the dealer’s hands are revealed.

A pair split across both hands is a common way new players accidentally disqualify a hand: putting one King in the low hand and leaving the five-card hand without enough to beat it.

The Joker: Ace or Wild for a Straight or Flush

The single joker in a 53-card pai gow poker deck is not a full wild card. It has exactly two uses, and no others.

Use	When it applies
Completes a straight	When the other four cards in a hand need one specific card to form a straight
Completes a flush	When the other four cards in a hand need one specific card to form a flush
Counts as an Ace	In every other situation, including the two-card low hand

That narrow role means the joker cannot be used to pair with another card or to complete a four-of-a-kind on its own; it only fills the straight-or-flush gap, and otherwise plays as the highest card in the deck.

How a Hand Wins, Loses or Pushes

Every player’s two hands are compared against the dealer’s equivalent two hands — high against high, low against low — and the outcome depends on both comparisons together.

Outcome	What has to happen
Win	Both the high hand and the low hand beat the dealer’s high hand and low hand
Loss	Both hands lose to the dealer’s hands
Push	One hand wins and the other loses — the high hand beats the dealer’s but the low hand doesn’t, or the reverse
Tie goes to the dealer	An identical hand between player and dealer counts as a win for the dealer on that hand

A push returns the original bet rather than winning or losing it, which is why pai gow poker plays slower and swings less than most table games over the same number of rounds.

The 5% Commission on Wins

Pai gow poker charges the standard 5% commission on winning bets, the same commission structure used on baccarat’s Banker bet. It applies only when a hand wins outright — not on a push, and not on a loss.

A win of two units, for example, pays out with 5% held back as commission, tracked by the table rather than deducted chip by chip from the felt. The table’s own rules panel states exactly how the commission is collected for that table.

The House Way: How the Dealer’s Hand Is Set

The dealer does not choose freely how to split their seven cards. The “house way” is a fixed set of rules the dealer follows every time, removing any judgment call from how the dealer’s hand is arranged.

1. The house way sets the dealer’s five-card and two-card hands according to a published, unchanging rule set.
2. Some tables let a player bank a hand and apply the house way to other players’ hands too.
3. Because the house way is fixed, it never varies by dealer, by table or by how a round is going.

Knowing that the dealer’s hand is set by a fixed rule rather than a decision is what separates pai gow poker’s dealer role from a blackjack dealer’s — see PHDREAM blackjack basic strategy for how differently a blackjack dealer’s hand is forced to play.

Pai Gow Poker at PHDREAM’s Live Casino

Pai gow poker is one of the poker-style variants covered in PHDREAM live casino, alongside baccarat and blackjack behind the LIVE CASINO tab.

1. Open LIVE CASINO and select a pai gow poker table.
2. Read that table’s rules panel to confirm its commission rate and its minimum and maximum bet.
3. Set your five-card and two-card hands before the table’s timer closes the round.
4. If pai gow’s two-hand format isn’t what you were looking for, read PHDREAM texas holdem rules for a single-hand poker game instead.