EZ Pai Gow

The Wizard states in his new review of EZ Pai Gow that most casinos do not allow players to bank this game. For the unfamiliar it is a no commission version of Pai Gow where the banker pushes with queen high pai gow. At the Pala Casino in San Diego, a player may bank and he does not pay when he has a queen high pai gow, however he is subject to the 5% commission on his net win. I was thinking that this might actually make the banking part of the game +EV since, as the banker, the commission and the push on Queen high push rules roughly cancel each other out, and you win on copies. Any thoughts?

Quote: bigfoot66

The Wizard states in his new review of EZ Pai Gow that most casinos do not allow players to bank this game. For the unfamiliar it is a no commission version of Pai Gow where the banker pushes with queen high pai gow. At the Pala Casino in San Diego, a player may bank and he does not pay when he has a queen high pai gow, however he is subject to the 5% commission on his net win. I was thinking that this might actually make the banking part of the game +EV since, as the banker, the commission and the push on Queen high push rules roughly cancel each other out, and you win on copies. Any thoughts?

The 5% commission costs about -1.25% since roughly 1/4 of your hands are wins. You would have the wins-on-copies rule in your favor to offset this. However, since the overall house edge (commission+copies) at PGP is in the 2-2.5% range (depending on rules, house way, etc.), and the commission is 1.25% of that, my feeling is that banking would be a breakeven venture at best.