Pai Gow Tiles with Playing Cards

As I always have a deck of cards with me, and can't carry my pai gow tiles around,
I've developed a way to practice using the deck of cards.
Simply discard all the face cards, the black aces, the black threes, the red fives, and the red nines.
As there are some tiles that have the same value such as high six and low six,
The red cards will represent tiles that have the higher value and the black cards the lower value.

With your remaining cards representing the 32 tiles thusly:

GeeJoon: Red 3's
Teen: Red 2's
Day: Black 2's
Yun: Red 8's
Gor: Red 4's
Mooy: Red 10's
Chong: Red 6's
Bon: Black 4's
Foo: Red Aces
Ping: Black 10's
Tit: Red 7's
Look: Black 6's
Gow: Black 9's
Bot: Black 8's
Chit: Black 7's
Ng: Black 5's

You just deal out four cards and construct your hands as you would using dominoes.
It takes only a little while to learn if you know the game and the rankings.
Its a lot faster than tiles and you can play it anywhere.

Clever. Not entirely sure whether practicing in this fashion would help or hinder one's skills with the actual tiles.

Quote: WongBo

As I always have a deck of cards with me, and can't carry my pai gow tiles around,
I've developed a way to practice using the deck of cards.

There is an app for iphone that works great. Will give you a 'house way' if you want to check your setting.

I have noticed that the iPhone/iPad apps for pai gow often to not always follow an ideal strategy.
I use paiGow Tutor for iOS v0.3 and PaiGowHD by World Direct on iPad as I do not have apps on my phone.
Both of these follow a House Way that is close to traditional strategy, with some deviation.
Of couse no game app is perfect, and these two are pretty good.

As far as my game, using the cards, it definitely helps.
I have become accustomed to equating the cards with the tiles they represent,
So I am continually aware of ranking.
And I get to play anywhere, anytime without a phone.