How Are Hands Ranked in Pai Gow Tiles?

The two hands: high hand and second hand

Every round starts the same way. All players and the dealer receive four tiles each, and each player must split those four tiles into two pairs¹. One pair becomes your High Hand, the other your Low Hand. Some tables call the second one the "second hand," but it is the same idea: two separate two-tile hands, each judged on its own².

The whole skill of the game sits in that split. You are not trying to build one strong hand. You are trying to build two hands that can each beat the dealer's matching hand, because the dealer compares like with like. At Hoiana, for example, the comparison always runs Low Hand against Low Hand and High Hand against High Hand, and the two are never cross-compared³. The dealer works around the table from right to left⁴.

There is one hard rule about how you set them. The High Hand must always be a higher-ranking hand than the Low Hand³. If you set them the wrong way round, you have fouled your hand, and in Pai Gow Poker the same mistake forfeits your wager to the extent the money covers it². Treat the High Hand as your stronger pair and the Low Hand as your weaker one, every time.

If only one of your hands beats only one of the dealer's, the round is a tie and your bet pushes¹. You need both hands to win to get paid, and both to lose to lose your stake. That push-heavy structure is why Pai Gow tiles rounds so often end in nothing changing hands.

The Banker has an edge built into the ranking itself: the Banker wins on all ties and covers the wagers of the other players each round¹. The role is not fixed to the house. The dealer offers the banker role around the table before rounds¹, so at some tables you can take it, with the tie advantage and the extra risk that comes with covering everyone.

Named hands: Wong and Gong

Above the ordinary point hands sit two named combinations that beginners meet early: Wong and Gong. Both are built from a specific high tile plus a specific low tile, and both beat every plain point total.

A Wong is a 12 plus any 9, or a 2 plus any 9¹. The 12-and-9 version is the stronger of the two, and the 2-and-9 version sits just below it¹. A Gong is the same pattern with an 8 instead of a 9: a 12 plus any 8, or a 2 plus any 8¹. Again the 12 version outranks the 2 version¹.

So the ladder in that middle band runs, from the top down: Wong with a 12, Wong with a 2, Gong with a 12, Gong with a 2. All four beat any hand that is merely a point total, however close to nine that total gets. All four lose to any pair.

This is where the game's name comes in. "Pai Gow" means "to make nine"¹, and the everyday hands are scored by adding the pips on the two tiles and taking the total modulo ten, so nine is the perfect score¹. Wong and Gong are the exceptions that jump the queue: they are not scored as points at all, they are named hands that outrank the point hands entirely.

One practical note on ties inside the point hands. When two hands total the same, the hand is judged on the rank of its highest tile, not on the number of pips⁵. So two hands that both add to seven are not equal; the one holding the stronger single tile wins. The lowest single tiles in the set are the 4-2 and the 2-1⁶, which is worth knowing when you are deciding which tile to bury in your Low Hand.

Bo and Chop Bo: matched and mismatched pairs

Pairs are the top of the Pai Gow tiles ranking, and they come in two kinds.

A Bo is any matched pair of tiles, and its ranking depends on the value of the combination a player puts down¹. A Chop Bo is a pair of tiles with the same value but in mismatched configurations¹. In plain terms, a Bo is a clean pair, two tiles that match exactly. A Chop Bo is a pair by value where the tiles themselves are not identical, which makes it a weaker sort of pair.

The full order at the top of the game runs like this. Gee Joon, the Supreme pair, is the highest pair of all; it adds up to 9 and wins every time¹. Below it come the eleven identical pairs, and below those come the four Chop Bo pairs, in the order chop gow, chop bot, chop chit, chop ng⁵. The named identical pairs run teen, day, yun, gor, mooy, chong, bon, foo, ping, tit and look⁵.

That gives you a clean way to think about the whole ranking, in three groups: pairs at the top; Wongs, Gongs and high 9s in the middle; standard hands at the bottom⁵. Within the pairs, Gee Joon leads, then the identical pairs, then the Chop Bo pairs. Within the middle band, Wong beats Gong, and the 12 versions beat the 2 versions. Within the standard hands, you are just chasing the highest point total, with the highest single tile as the tiebreak⁵.

A hand in Pai Gow is two tiles⁵, so every one of these combinations is built from exactly two tiles. That is the single most useful thing to hold in your head when you are learning the ranking: nothing here involves three tiles, four tiles or five. Four tiles is what you are dealt; two tiles is what you are ranking.

What the ranking does not cover

The ranking above is the whole of Pai Gow tiles, and it is worth being clear about what it is not, because the name causes most of the confusion.

Pai Gow tiles is played with 32 domino-like tiles¹. Pai Gow Poker is a different game. It mixes elements of Pai Gow, an ancient Chinese game, with seven-card poker⁷. In Pai Gow Poker each player and the dealer is dealt seven cards, arranged into two poker hands, one with five cards and one with two⁷. It is played with a 53-card deck that includes one Joker⁷, and the table has positions for six players and a dealer's area⁷. The dealer shakes a dice cup to see which player receives their cards first⁷.

So if you sit down expecting poker rankings, you are in the wrong game. Poker hands are five cards⁸, and there are ten different poker hands, from the Royal Flush down to the high card⁹. None of that applies to the tile game. The tile game's ranking is its own system: pairs, then Wong and Gong, then point totals.

The same caution applies to other Asian games that look similar at a glance. Pok Deng, for instance, is a card game with its own table of hand types and its own "deng" multipliers, and its rankings have nothing to do with Pai Gow tiles¹⁰. If you want the wider picture of how these games sit alongside each other, our guide to Asian gambling games covers mahjong, pachinko, fan-tan and the rest, and nine-point card games compares Pok Deng, Bai Buu and Oicho-Kabu directly.

Where you can actually play Pai Gow tiles matters too. Macau is the only jurisdiction in the People's Republic of China where casino gaming is lawful⁹, and live poker there is permitted inside licensed casinos and overseen as part of the city's regulated gaming industry⁸. If you are planning a trip around table games, our Macau guide sets out what visitors, residents and citizens can do, and where Asian games are legal compares twelve jurisdictions side by side.

A few practical points for a first session:

• Buy chips by placing cash on the table and letting the dealer exchange it; money and chips are never exchanged directly between a dealer and a player⁷.
• Keep wallets, handbags and other personal items tucked away, and keep drinks in the holders to avoid spills¹¹.
• If you are at a table that also spreads Pai Gow Poker, check which game you have sat down at before you set anything: at Okada Manila the poker version asks you to set a low hand of two cards and a high hand of five¹², which is a completely different exercise from splitting four tiles into two pairs of two.