Pai Gow Poker Dealer Banker House Wager

Simple question, I know that when a player takes the role of Player Banker, the Dealer will act as a player and will set out cards with a wager from the Rack/House.

What determines how much the dealer wager is?

Your last bet is the max plus possibly ten percent

Thank you. So the Dealer (casino employee) will wager the same amount that you had bet on your previous turn (possibly 10% more). I assume as the Player Banker you don't actually wager anything. You just have enough to cover all the other players.

Where this can get tricky is how the casino rotates the banker. I'm a little rusty on PGP but the dealer's wager against a player banker may be the amount of the player's last bet against the dealer. You might bet less when the friend on your left is banker. There is no issue if the dealer alternates being banker every other hand. However, if the banker rotates around the table in a circle without the dealer being banker in between the players, now you could get "penalized" for lowering your bet when the player next to you was banking if the dealer will match only your last bet. You would want the dealer to bet against you how much you bet against the house, not how much you bet against the player next to you.

Quote: dareeldill

Thank you. So the Dealer (casino employee) will wager the same amount that you had bet on your previous turn (possibly 10% more). I assume as the Player Banker you don't actually wager anything. You just have enough to cover all the other players.

Most places I've seen, you don't have to play a hand against the dealer when you're banking if you don't want to (the house isn't all that anxious to have you play against it anyway). But if you do opt to do so, you have to have enough to cover all the player bets AND whatever the dealer bets against you.

Thank you everyone. I feel as if my question has been answered. Your help has been greatly appreciated.

Quote: Joeshlabotnik

Most places I've seen, you don't have to play a hand against the dealer when you're banking if you don't want to (the house isn't all that anxious to have you play against it anyway). But if you do opt to do so, you have to have enough to cover all the player bets AND whatever the dealer bets against you.

I usually don't deal in absolutes, and maybe in Cali where there's a player/banker it's different, but I have Never seen where a person was allowed to bank without at least a table minimum bet against the house. The upper cap is the amount of your last bet.

The house does give up the ties advantage, but they still collect their 5% if you win, so I think it's still -ev. I've only ever seen a free hand dealt in baccarat. Playing head to head pgp, this would essentially be a free hand every other hand, pointless waste of house time on a single-deck game shuffled every hand.. They just don't do this on that game.

Sure you can- it's called co bank and each button has to have it written on the opposite side- I'm s
Sure a lot of casinos had different rules though
At mount airy in pa when they first got it - there was no bet required aginast the house if you co banked

Quote: beachbumbabs

I usually don't deal in absolutes, and maybe in Cali where there's a player/banker it's different, but I have Never seen where a person was allowed to bank without at least a table minimum bet against the house. The upper cap is the amount of your last bet.

The house does give up the ties advantage, but they still collect their 5% if you win, so I think it's still -ev. I've only ever seen a free hand dealt in baccarat. Playing head to head pgp, this would essentially be a free hand every other hand, pointless waste of house time on a single-deck game shuffled every hand.. They just don't do this on that game.

I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but the 5% commission gives up 1.25%, due to the fact that you only win about 1/4 of the time, and when you're banking, you win ties, even against the house, so that pretty much cancels that 1.25%. I think the house advantage independent of the commission is 1.30%, so that would suggest that the house doesn't really want to bet against the player-banker; he has a slight edge.

In practice, I've been allowed to not bet against the dealer when I had barely enough to cover the table. This was at Coasts and Fiestas. It probably rarely comes up as an issue due to the fact that the player will usually WANT to play against the dealer.