Pai Gow Poker house-way calculator
Pick your seven cards and the calculator sets the optimal split — the five-card back and two-card front — following the house way that underlies correct pai gow poker strategy:
The one principle of Pai Gow Poker strategy
Because you must win both hands to win the bet, the goal is not to make the strongest possible back hand — it is to make your weaker hand as strong as possible. In practice that means: build the best two-card front hand you can while leaving a five-card back hand that still outranks it. Get that balance right on every hand and you play pai gow poker at its minimum house edge.
House way by hand type
Here is how correct strategy — and the dealer's house way — sets the most common seven-card holdings:
| Your seven cards | How to set it |
|---|---|
| No pair | Highest card stays in the back; play your next two highest cards in the front. |
| One pair | Keep the pair in the back; play your two highest remaining cards in the front. |
| Two pair | Usually split — higher pair back, lower pair front. But keep both pairs in back (playing an ace in front) when both pairs are small. |
| Three of a kind | Keep the trips in the back — except three aces, which you split (pair of aces back, one ace front). |
| Straight or flush | Keep it in the back, unless breaking it lets you make a strong pair in the front while the back still wins. |
| Full house | Split it — three of a kind in the back, the pair in the front. |
| Four of a kind | Keep high quads together; split medium quads to put a pair in front; always keep low quads. |
Two pair — the key decision
Two pair is where most pai gow poker mistakes happen. The default is to split: your higher pair anchors the back hand and your lower pair becomes a strong front. But if both pairs are small and you hold an ace, splitting leaves a weak back hand, so the house way keeps the two pair together in the back and plays the ace high in the front. The calculator above makes this call for you automatically.
Reading your seven cards
Good pai gow poker strategy starts with reading all seven cards before you touch them. Sort the cards by rank and look for pairs, then for straight and flush possibilities across the five back cards. Ask two questions of the cards in front of you: what is the best five-card hand I can build, and what is the strongest two-card front I can set without the back cards falling behind? Most seven-card holdings answer themselves — a single pair, or a hand with no pair where the highest card must anchor the back and the next two cards go in front. The awkward cards are the ones that can be arranged several ways, and those are exactly where the calculator earns its keep.
Setting the front two cards
The two cards you place in front decide most hands. When you have no pair, your front two cards should be your second- and third-highest cards, because the single highest card has to stay in the back so the five back cards still win. When you hold a pair and high cards, keep the pair in the back and push your two highest cards to the front. When you have two pair, one of those pairs usually becomes your front two cards. In every case the aim is the same — the front two cards as strong as the back will allow, with the highest card working for whichever hand needs it most.
A quick checklist for the cards in your hand: never foul (the back five cards must beat the front two cards); never bury a pair among five nothing cards when it could be a front pair; and never split a straight or flush unless the loose cards make a genuinely strong front. Follow those rules on all seven cards and your pai gow poker strategy is essentially complete.
Why house way is good enough
Computer-optimal pai gow poker strategy beats the house way by only a tiny fraction of a percent, so for real play the house way is effectively perfect — and far easier to remember than a full solver. Learn the seven rules above, lean on the calculator when a hand is awkward, and you will give up nothing meaningful beyond the game's built-in edge and 5% commission. For other low-edge table games, see our Three Card Poker strategy and Ultimate Texas Hold'em strategy.
The calculator follows the standard house-way / maximise-the-front principle over a 52-card hand; exact casino house-way tables vary slightly on a few edge cases. Educational content, not gambling advice.