Pai Gow: Expected wins, losses and pushes...

If this is elsewhere on the site, I apologize. Wizard or JB, using the Wizard, JB and/or optimal strategy against the house way, if you play 100 hands, how many will you win, lose and push? What is the difference if you are banking?

I'm just thinking about how much to bet per hand and expected losses. I think with a full table, I'll play roughly 15-18 hands per hour. Assuming I play 5-6 hours - or roughly 90 hands - what do you think the expected loss will be? How about the one standard deviation?

Many sources say you push "About 40% of the time."


It's all on the Wiz' Pai Gow pages.

Tiles, it about the middle of this page: https://wizardofodds.com/paigow
Your push rate is 40.61% - 41.43% depending on a variety of variables.

Poker, near the top of this page: https://wizardofodds.com/paigowpoker
Your push rate is 41.48%, but the page doesn't break it down for different methods or banking.

Without any calculations, I'm just going to ballpark this based on my experience. If somebody performs the calculations, I'll be interested to see how close I am.

For 90 hands played, I'd guess the average is about 40 ties, 24 wins and 26 losses. I'd guess the average loss over 90 hands is 2-3 bets, with a standard deviation of about 4 bets.

I don't typically play at full tables. Usually I'm playing 1 on 1 with the dealer, or maybe one other player. Under these circumstances, I'm sure they deal at least 30 hands per hour, probably 35. I would've guessed that a full table can still deal around 25 hand/hour.

All good.....

There is a Table of Frequency of Win, Lose and Push in Pai Gow poker from Stanford Wong's
"Optimal Play in Pai Gow Poker" (p.24), it is below:

31.4% Player Wins
32.6% Banker/House wins
36.0% Player and Banker push.

Wong's sources are somewhat different than the Wizard's. Wong focuses on the serious California-based Card room scene, and the Wizard studies wide-spread and general, almost global Casino play.

I assume that what is represented in Wizard's figure of > 40% pushes is the "push-oriented" approach typical of casino house ways, and Wong's 36.0% push rate is the result of aggressive card-room banker play, e.g., "Split Queens and 5's with an ace-low" instead of keeping them together, more likely to push.

Banker/House wins a tad more because of the wins on copies, and because players don't always use a consistent and knowledgable strategy. The Dealer always sticks to the house way; a reasonable and consistent sheet is better than flying with none at all.