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| Best online casino / Online casino games / Pai Gow |
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Pai Gow is an ancient game that originated in China. How long ago did it come about? That is difficult to say. Seeing as China has over 10,000 years of history, finding a tiny event such as the invention of a specific game, among the hundreds of thousands of major events that have occurred in that culture, is a daunting task for any historian. Suffice to say that we know it was an ancient Chinese game, and in its purest form it is played with dominoes.
The modern casino game of Pai Gow Poker is a marriage of Pai Gow and Poker. There are many critics who call this version a significant bastardization of the original game. The sort of people who make such statements are exactly the sort of people who get invited to the good parties where games like Pai Gow poker are played, so they can be, for the most part, ignored.
Pai Gow is only one of many other domino games that have been played for thousands of years in China. The major problem with Pai Gow when played as originally intended is the fact that it is an incredibly complex game. A set of Chinese dominoes is separated into "military" suits and "civilian" suits, symbolic of the warring Chinese cultures. The civilian suit tiles have names and unique Chinese symbols such as plum flower, heaven and goose associated with them. The military suits are simply associated with the numbers that their tiles represent. Pai Gow players become so adept at the game that these complicated elements and rules are memorized and handed down from generation to generation. For the casual gamer this seems like way to much work.
Traditionally Pai Gow, players attempt to make two tile "hands" from a "woodpile" of dealt tiles. Each of these hands consists of two tiles. The object is to get one pair of tiles equal to a total greater than the other two tiles, and then one or both hands to exceed one or both opponent’s hands. This level of complexity would not exactly be considered casino friendly, so in order to appeal to a more the straightforward gambling appetite of the American player, a version of Pai Gow in that married some of the traditional Pai Gow rules with a version of Poker. This invention in gaming appeared in California card rooms sometime in the 1980s. |
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