Pai Gow Tiles: Wizard Way Strategy

Quote: appistappis

wiz, its amazing the way the regulars (asians) will scoff at what are better plays.....yet they go with the superstitions like they are paved in gold....all games, not just tiles.

It would be easy to run with that, but my own pale faces can be pretty bad too, but in different ways. Like blaming the player at third base for everybody losing in blackjack, or the guy who says "seven" at the craps table.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

So Wiz, what was the dealer's hand?

Did your decision give you a better result than the alternative?

I think I would have pushed either way. However, it isn't important whether you won or lost, but whether you made the right decision, which I did.

Haven't had a chance to write since I went to Vegas 28-Apr to 02-May. I had a great time. Stayed and played at Aria. Very nice. In any case, the Wizard way and JB's strategy helped A LOT. I've been playing for many, many years (I only play once or twice a year) and spent my time learning the traditional way - most recently studying it on paigow.com. The past few years it has really begun to click and recently studying on this site and wizardofodds.com really helped.

Playing 0's 1's and 2's to push up the high hand instead of a low of a 3 or 4 really made a difference and the real (Asian) pros playing noticed and commented on my play.

Thanks.

Quote: JB

Quote: Aussie

I emailed the wizard some time ago about the effect of strategy changes made when you know how many teens or days other players have. What effect would knowledge of other specific tiles make? Is it possible that the pai gow calculator could have a funtion whereby you tell it what other tiles you know are out and give adjusted EVs accordingly?

I actually studied this for a bit, and quickly came to the conclusion that it is definitely not worth the effort, for several reasons: the reduction in house edge is tiny, the opportunity to see another player's tiles AND to see a Teen and/or Day among them is rare, and the strategy changes are so scattered and nuisance-like that they would be impossible to remember.

Here are the reductions in house edge if you learn every single strategy change:

Seeing a Teen in another player's hand: 0.07%
Seeing a Day in another player's hand: 0.08%
Seeing a Teen and Day in another player's hand: 0.35%

Keep in mind these are merely reductions in the house edge, and are not sufficient enough to gain an advantage overall.
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The research is done but the result is not nil.

There's a saying that to really understand Pai Gow, you have to be Chinese, and you have to be a thousand years old.

This game can actually be played using poker cards. The only thing unique about using tiles is that they can be easily recognized by hand feeling, so even blind people can play this game. I believe it’s a myth that this game is hundreds years old. The current rules are probably decades old, I believe.

Quote: aceside

This game can actually be played using poker cards. The only thing unique about using tiles is that they can be easily recognized by hand feeling, so even blind people can play this game. I believe it’s a myth that this game is hundreds years old. The current rules are probably decades old, I believe.
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According to Ai the game is almost a thousand years old and the oldest set of handcarved dominoes is from around 1350 .

According to wiki, the earliest description of the game of Pai Gow tiles was published in Hong Kong in 1886.