Paigow Tiles Playing House Way

Lets assume I'm at an empty table.

What are the chances that I would be able to set my tiles but still play house way?

Should I even try asking or not even bother?


I have no issue just going with house way I do nothing if other players come to the table. If it is just me at the dealer, I'm more looking to see if I'm actually playing near house way or not. I realize there are better ways to play over house way, but I am new enough to the game that I'm not confident I'm even better than house way if I try to alter the strat.

If it matters, I would be playing $25-$50/hand maximum.

Quote: soulhunt79

Lets assume I'm at an empty table.

What are the chances that I would be able to set my tiles but still play house way?

You can always ask the dealer to set your tiles house ways. You can look at them first, and make your own set up, then ask the dealer if that is houise ways. If not he will tell you, and you can switch before he sets his hand. If there are other players at the table you must wait until they are finished setting their hands before you ask the dealer for help. You can also just not even look at your tiles and ask for house ways, if you want.

I thought I knew what I was doing the first time I played. But I was wrong. The $200 I lost was an expensive lesson. If you have a chance, buy a set of tiles on Amazon, that will help. Going and having them set your hand house way won't help you learn that much. Honestly, watching others play would probably help you more. I wonder how often playing house way is the wrong way to set your hand. It seems to happen all the time.

Perhaps the better question would be what percentage of the time is the optimal strategy the same as the house way. That, I don't know. To make an educated guess, I'd say about 95%. That may sound low, but there are a lot of tricky plays in pai gow, where the house way it not the best way.

I'll alert JB to this question, he may know the answer.

Quote: FinsRule

I thought I knew what I was doing the first time I played. But I was wrong. The $200 I lost was an expensive lesson. If you have a chance, buy a set of tiles on Amazon, that will help. Going and having them set your hand house way won't help you learn that much. Honestly, watching others play would probably help you more. I wonder how often playing house way is the wrong way to set your hand. It seems to happen all the time.

I learned the game on WoO site. After many hours of practice I went to a live casino. I asked the dealer to check my hands for quite a while. When I realized I wasn't making any mistakes, I have been flying solo ever since. I would say that Mike's estimate of house way being optimal way of 95% is low, my guess is somewhere between 97 and 98%. There are just so many hands that 'play themselves' that you probably don't even remember those. This does not include hands where you know specific tiles are out in other players hands. (example- if you know both 'teens' are out then you would always play your 'day' as a nine and not a gong or wong)

Quote: FinsRule

I thought I knew what I was doing the first time I played. But I was wrong. The $200 I lost was an expensive lesson. If you have a chance, buy a set of tiles on Amazon, that will help. Going and having them set your hand house way won't help you learn that much. Honestly, watching others play would probably help you more. I wonder how often playing house way is the wrong way to set your hand. It seems to happen all the time.

And that is why I don't really want them to just set it house way. I want to set it and see if I'm actually right or not. Seems like I'll be playing on one of the open tables I always see walking through Paris in the afternoon.

I'm fine with house way being the non optimal way of seeing my hand as well. I'm just trying to minimize losses at this point. If the house edge is 2-3%, I want to keep it that way. :) My biggest concern when placing them myself is I don't know how much I can even hurt myself. I know in BJ that if I stay on 15 against a 10, I'm giving the house a little extra and due to the Wizard I can look at a chart and actually see how much I'm giving them. I have no idea how much better setting a 7/7 over a 8/6 is, for example. Now if I'm only giving them back .1%, then that is fine. If that is a 1.5% mistake, then that is a problem.

There are already limited ways of placing the tiles. I expect much of your expected win/lose is already determined just by the 4 tiles you have and not much you can do about that.


The main reason I'm interested in this game is that the optimal way does appear to be much more complex than a lot of other games, so it will be possible to keep improving for a while. :)

To address the original question, most dealers will have no problem advising if you set your hand according to the house way, as long as it doesn't slow down a busy table too much. However, there was a dealer at the Treasure Island who refused to do so, because she said it confused her when she had to set her own hand.

I asked JB about the question I posed earlier today. Here is what he wrote in reply.

Quote: JB

If you are looking at the number of unique hands, the answer is 3163/3620 = 87.3757%
If you are looking at the number of total hands, the answer is 28852/35960 = 80.2336%

So, my 95% estimate was way off.

Quote: soulhunt79

There are already limited ways of placing the tiles. I expect much of your expected win/lose is already determined just by the 4 tiles you have and not much you can do about that.

I might be wrong, but I think the bigger factors in the house edge are whether you can bank or not, and whether you can prepay the commission (less important than the banking). Proper strategy can knock of small percentages in the long-run, but banking will have you win hands you otherwise push, thus pushing (or even winning) hands you would lose when not banking. Horseshoe Southern Indiana offers the game without banking as an option, so the strategy differences are more important.

To further complicate things, there's a different strategy for hands when banking vs. not banking.

A lot of casinos in Vegas will only charge you a $1.00 commission on a $25.00 bet now. They just don't have quarters. Two that I know of are Palazzo and Aria. This saved me a TON of money last trip. Effective 4% commission.

Quote: teddys

A lot of casinos in Vegas will only charge you a $1.00 commission on a $25.00 bet now. They just don't have quarters. Two that I know of are Palazzo and Aria. This saved me a TON of money last trip. Effective 4% commission.

Good to know. :) I usually play at Paris which does have quarters.