New pai gow videos

I'm proud to announce the publication of parts one and two of my three-part series on pai gow. Here are the links:

Part 1
Part 2

Let me apologize in advance for the absence of Angela. She called in extremely sick the night before. It was not easy to coordinate schedules to do this thing so we did it without her. However, she does appear in part 3, which we're still editing. Filling in for Angela is Heather Ferris of Vegas Aces, videographer, and known as vegasaces here.

This was a difficult game to explain so please go easy on me in your criticism.

I was just encouraged by RaleighCraps to try to learn this finally - might go to Biloxi one of these days and he says it is available somewhere there and he was glad he learned to play it.

So this has come out at a convenient time, thanks.

As far as criticism goes, are they finished videos, or are there things that can be added or changed now?

Thank you for this! But you are pointing out tiles without showing them closely to the camera, so we don't know what tiles you're talking about.

If you could add in insert in the corner as you're talking about a pair of tiles, with a close up.. that would help a lot.

Quote: odiousgambit

As far as criticism goes, are they finished videos, or are there things that can be added or changed now?

They are done unless a major error is found.

Quote: rsactuary

If you could add in insert in the corner as you're talking about a pair of tiles, with a close up.. that would help a lot.

I can see them fine but I have a large monitor. Anyone else agree or disagree with this comment?

Quote: Wizard

I can see them fine but I have a large monitor. Anyone else agree or disagree with this comment?

Fine on a monitor, too small on a phone and I have the type of iPhone with the larger screen. I think that would be a terrific add with the tiles in the corner if it wouldn’t take a ton of work.

Quote: Wizard

I can see them fine but I have a large monitor. Anyone else agree or disagree with this comment?

If ONE viewer says that it is a problem, then it is likely to be a problem for many similarly situated viewers. I have poor vision and a lousy monitor. I've not watched the videos however because this computer I'm on and its browser won't play videos and there are no speakers anyway.

The main thing is that electronically "splicing" in a close up a particular tile is not bad for anyone and would be good for many.

If this stretches it to Four video segments so be it. Many of your viewers will be early twenties but many will be like me: ancient and doddering.

Great videos! I have two comments:

1. I hope in the third video you will talk about co-banking, because I was confused by it the first time I played in Vegas. My home casino doesn't allow banking.
2. In the hand at about the 24 minute mark in the second video, I think it might be interesting to see the discussion of Heather's hand. There's a low eight, a nine, and a high and low ten, so there's two different ways to play 9-8. It's those hands that always give me pause.

Quote: Wizard

I can see them fine but I have a large monitor. Anyone else agree or disagree with this comment?

I would agree that, if possible, add in a box with the tiles in the corner. On my phone i had no clue what I was looking at, on my laptop (~5 years old) and desktop monitor (~3 years old) if I did full screen I could see the tiles okay, but not great, and on my TV and ~2 year old Mac full screen it was fine.

While its easy to dismiss the older and smaller hardware, you'll get a wider audience doing that little bit extra.

I'm assuming the suggestion of adding a box to see the tiles better is dead on arrival due to cost or whatever.

Perhaps a suggestion could be added to open a new tab or window with a url showing the tiles clearly, such as http://www.paigow.com/pai/gow/tiles/32_pairs.gif while watching the video.

showing what will come up below. BTW Rcraps suggested this site, paigow.com, for a thorough and complete introduction to this game. 'Thorough' is putting it mildly. Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

PS: this is tricky but you can open your browser as a 'new page' instead of 'new tab' , then shrink down the browser page so that it just shows the image. Then you can tweak the whole business so that you watch the video and have the tiles image next to it all showing at once.

All right, all right -- I just asked the one who edits these videos if it is possible to add images of the tiles as the video goes. I'm sure this would be very time consuming for him but we've come this far already. These videos are a lot harder to put together than it probably seems to you.

I've had a response and Petar, the one who takes the raw footage and turns it into a video, will add the tile images. He is on vacation until late March so I wouldn't expect a revision until mid April at least.

As long as we're going back in there, if anyone feels they have found an error, we can always address it with text corrections. However, I am not going to reshoot the thing.

Quote: Wizard

I've had a response and Petar, the one who takes the raw footage and turns it into a video, will add the tile images. He is on vacation until late March so I wouldn't expect a revision until mid April at least.

Thanks for listening to the critiques and agreeing to have these edits done; I appreciate how much extra work this will be. I do believe it will make for a better product in the long run. Thanks to Petar for being willing to go back and do this extra work.

watching again I notice Mike is quite ready to drop the Chinese names and will sometimes just say "the five tile" or whatever

at Paigow.com you really can't get away from learning the Chinese names. So I have wound up blending the creation story with little ditties to help me connect. Unfortunately I can't relate here how I remember and connect 'tit' and 'look' [this is a family site!] and some of the other stuff I came up with is even worse.

Are some of the Chinese names pronounced differently than you might think? And how do you pronounce Ng?

I've never been a fan of using the Chinese names. I admit I do for gee, joon, teen, and day, but only because are mentioned so often. It was never a conscious choice, if you play enough of anything you will pick up on the parlance. So far I just haven't seen a reason to commit to memory the other tiles.

Every time I played in a casino just about the only Chinese they used was teen, day, wong, gong, and bo. Everything else was by the numbers, so there was no reason to know the Chinese names of the tiles.

There's a lot of talk by the wizard about why the wong and gong rules exist, and everyone in the video agrees the rules are random and inexplicable.

But wong and gong are very easy to understand. Without the wong/gong, the teen/day tiles become MUCH worse, as they would interact with the 8s and 9s to form 0s and 1s.

So to keep the teen and day tiles powerful, wongs and gongs are made by simply adding up the pips and NOT dropping the tens place. Your teen tile (high 2) adds to the 9 to become 11. Your day tile (low 2) adds to the 8 to become 10. And so on.

A two with a 9 is an 11, with an 8 is a 10, and with a 7 is a high nine. Easy.

I find it a lot easier to explain wongs and gongs to new players as 11s and 10s, which beat 9s. You can also say that pairs have a value of 12.

I also like to explain what the wizard calls high and low 10 tiles as high and low zero, and I call the eleven the one -- when explaining games to beginners.

One thing that I will mention that I didn't see too much in the videos was the sacrificing of high 9s, wongs. and gongs to play something like a 6-7. The JB Simple Strategy mentions it a lot and it distinguishes it from a house way. The house way would probably never sacrifice a high nine to play something like a 6-7.


I was thinking of a hand like L2, L4, L10, and H7. There are other examples of course. In this case, and someone can correct me if I am wrong, the house is almost certain to play the 4-9 instead of the 6-7. JB's simple strategy would be to play the 6-7. You would probably get some puzzled looks from the dealer and other players at the casino if you tried something like that but it would be a better play. Now, it can be tricky. If the hand were say H2, L4, L10, and H7, then the strategy would be to play 4-9 since the tiles didn't include a L2 or H8. I just thought I toss that out there.

Quote: Wulfgar1224

L2, L4, L10, and H7

I'm a little puzzled by your terminology. Naturally I expect L and H to mean 'the low hand' and the 'high hand' for a particular split, but it doesn't seem to fit, what with 4 all grouped together with , in the above, 3 Ls and one H.

This game is starting to get a grip on me now, after seeming to me to have such an impenetrable nature for so long.

It is a complicated game to learn and, if it was a book, there are various chapters. The first is an understanding of the tiles and the scoring.

If you've played dominoes then, ignoring the blanks, there are 1-6 dots at each end. Pai Gow Tiles, albeit different style and colours, are essentially the same. Indeed you can make a simple Pai Gow set from two sets of dominoes remembering the double 3 is the High 6.

If you know craps then having two dice with values 1 to 6 each and totals varying from 2 to 12 makes sense. Pai Gow Tiles use the same idea. Sometimes there are two of the same tile, sometimes two different ones are considered a pair.
2: There is only one way to make a total of 2 (1-1), there are two tiles of these (Lo 2) or Day.
3: There is only one way to make a total of 3 (1-2) (this is the same tile as 2-1), threre is only one of these and is one of the GJ tiles.
4: There are two ways for a total of 4 (2-2) and (1-3), unusually (1-3) is the High 4 and (2-2) is the Low 4; there are two of each.
5: There are two ways for a total of 5 (2-3) (1-4); there is one of each and these are considered a pair.
6: There are three ways (3-3)=High 6, (2-4)=the other GJ tile, (1-5)=Low 6. There are two (3-3) "Cheung" and two (1-5).
7: There are three ways (1-6)=High 7 and there is one of each (2-5)(3-4) Low 7 considered as a pair.
8: (4-4)=High8, (2-6)(3-5)=Low 8 and a pair.
9: Similar to 5
10: Similar to 10 eaxcept (5-5)=High 10, (4-6)=Low 10.
11: (6-5) except there are two of these.
12: (6-6) similar to 2 - (High 2) or Teen.

GJ ("Gee Joon") = (1-2) or (2-4); there is one of each but they can be considered as pair or each of them score as a 3 or 6.
10/11/12 tiles are essentially 0/1/2 as the tens of any total should be ignored.

Scores are
(a) Pairs - either two identical tiles or two different tiles considered a pair (as a beginner it is easy to overlook these so remember these).
(b) Wongs, Gongs and Hi 9s - either (1-1)or(6-6) with a 9, 8 or 7 tile.
(c) Two tiles - add up the spots (a la Baccarat) and ignore any tens. (e.g. 8+7=15 which becomes 5).
Where the scores are the same the rank of the higher tile is used to split ties.

Hope this helps

Quote: odiousgambit

I'm a little puzzled by your terminology. Naturally I expect L and H to mean 'the low hand' and the 'high hand' for a particular split, but it doesn't seem to fit, what with 4 all grouped together with , in the above, 3 Ls and one H.

This game is starting to get a grip on me now, after seeming to me to have such an impenetrable nature for so long.

Yeah, I was referring to individual tiles. The four tiles would be split into two hands of two each. I guess I could have written something like day, bon, ping, and tit. Those are the chinese names according to paigow.com.

Quote: Wulfgar1224

Yeah, I was referring to individual tiles.

OK, thanks. I need to get a set of tiles. Trying to follow such a conversation without having the tiles in hand is not to my taste.

Quote: sodawater

But wong and gong are very easy to understand. Without the wong/gong, the teen/day tiles become MUCH worse, as they would interact with the 8s and 9s to form 0s and 1s.

There has to be a lowest ranking tile and a worst tile. If you elevate the worth of one tile, you depress the values of all the other ones. The rule is what it is and I wouldn't dare suggest a change.

However, I hate the rule some people have in backgammon of making 1-2 turn into a 6-6, as if it is a benefit to both players. No!

The most hated rule I have in any game is the Free Parking rule in Monopoly. That knife cuts equally both ways, much like the Teen and Day rule. In the end, it only serves to add randomness to a game that already has plenty and increases the chances of bad players winning at the expense of the good ones.

Quote: Wizard

The most hated rule I have in any game is the Free Parking rule in Monopoly. That knife cuts equally both ways, much like the Teen and Day rule. In the end, it only serves to add randomness to a game that already has plenty and increases the chances of bad players winning at the expense of the good ones.

Yeah, that free parking rule (and most other house rules) only extends the game and completely throws off game strategy, and then people get mad and say, "Monopoly is a stupid game because it takes forever to play!"

Well, if you play by the ACTUAL rules, a game of Monopoly takes like 30-40 minutes.