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PAIRS AND STANDARD HANDS
B
P
A
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T
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AI
G
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第19期 2012年9月/10月
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#19SEP/OCT2012
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xplainingpai gow is sucha large subject,we’regoing to split it
into threearticles:
PartA:
The tilesandbasicplay (WGM issue17 Jul/Aug2012)
PartB:
Pairs and standard hands (the article you are reading
now)
PartC:
Wongs, gongs,
high 9s and
gee joon
(will be in a future
issueofWGM)
Ifyouhaven’t readpartA, youcan read itonline. Justvisitour
websitewgm8.comandenter“pai gowpartA”in the searchbox.
Now let’smove on to part B, inwhichwe start to evaluate
the hands we are dealt. In learning how to evaluate hands, we
truly begin to learn the mechanics of the game. The game of
pai gow is not rocket science but in comparison to games like
roulette, blackjack and baccarat it can be very complicated. In
someways this ispartof thebeautyof thegame!
Remember a hand in pai gow is two tiles. There are three
groupsof hands inpai gow:
•
Pairs
•
Wongs,gongs
andhigh9s
•
Standardhands
This is the order of hands from strongest to weakest, but we
are going to explain these in a di erent order as it makes the
explanationeasier tounderstand.
Pairs
Pairs are the strongest hands in pai gow. If you are dealt two
tiles that areexactly the same then younearly always play them
together.Obviously, twopairswouldgiveyou theverybest start,
as you then have a pair for your high hand and a pair for your
lowhand.
Aswe saidbefore there are16pairs in apai gowdeckwith
11of thosebeing identical. Theother ve arenon-identical. The
biggest problem for beginners is there are multiple tiles that
carry the samenumber of pips, and some arepairswhileothers
arenot. For example, let’shavea lookat the sevens:
Hereare the four tiles in thedeck thathave sevenpipson them:
Now this isapairof
tit
(or a
tit
pair):
And this isapairof
chopchit
(or a
chopchit
pair):
…but this isnot apair at all:
…it is just a standardhand (explained furtherbelow).
When you start playingpai gow, you canuse a list of all 16
pairs in rank order. This will help youwork out if your hand is a
pairornot.
Notice that the
gee joon
non-identical pair is the highest pair,
followed by the eleven identical pairs (
teen, day, yun, gor, mooy,
chong, bon, foo, ping, tit
and
look
, in that order), followedby the
Pai gow isanextraordinary tablegameplayedwith tiles. Acombinationof luck, skill and
culture, its complexity has scaredmany away, but if you take the time to learn youwill
have foundoneof the trulygreatgames tobeton, rich inbothAsianheritageandculture.
