Pai Gow Tiles

Reading the tile rankings

Thirty-two tiles, four cards each hand

The set contains sixteen kinds of tile, two of each, for thirty-two in total. You receive four and split them into a high hand and a low hand of two tiles apiece, with the high hand required to rank at least as high as the low.

Ordinary hands are scored by points: add the two tiles’ values and take the last digit, so nine is the best ordinary total and zero the worst. Above that sit three special categories — Gong, Wong, and pairs — which beat any point total.

Both your hands are compared against the dealer’s. Winning both wins the bet, losing both loses it, and a split is a push. Winning bets pay even money less a five percent commission.

The order is memorised, not calculated

The central difficulty of pai gow tiles is that pair rankings do not follow from tile values. The pair order is a fixed traditional sequence, and it does not correlate with how many points the tiles are worth. Two tiles worth very little can form a pair that outranks a pair of high-value tiles, and there is no rule to derive this from — it simply has to be learned.

Pairs beat everything, so recognising that you hold one is the first thing to check every hand. After that, look for Wong and Gong: a privileged tile paired with a tile totalling nine makes Wong, and with eight makes Gong. Both beat any ordinary point total.

The Gee Joon tiles are the game’s wildcard and the reason experienced players study it. They can count as either three or six, whichever produces the better hand, so a holding that looks like a poor total may in fact be a strong one. Always compute both options before setting a hand containing one.

As with the poker version, balance beats concentration. Two moderate hands win more often than one excellent hand and one hopeless one, because a split result returns your stake rather than winning it.

Hand categories, strongest first

The categories above are absolute: any pair beats any Wong, any Wong beats any Gong, and any of those beats the best possible point total of nine. Within the point totals, only the last digit matters, so a total of twelve scores two.

This is why the game rewards recognition over calculation. There are only sixteen kinds of tile and a fixed set of special combinations, so an experienced player identifies a hand’s category instantly rather than adding anything up. The arithmetic is trivial once you know which category you are in; the difficulty is entirely in knowing where a given pair sits in the traditional order.

Common mistakes

This is the least intuitive game on the floor, and its errors are specific to it.

• Assuming pair rank follows tile value. It does not — the pair order is traditional and arbitrary, and a low-value pair can outrank a high-value one.
• Missing the Gee Joon flexibility. Those tiles count as three or six, whichever helps, so a hand that looks weak may be considerably better than it appears.
• Adding totals above ten. Only the last digit counts, so twelve is a two and eleven is a one — a high raw sum can be a terrible hand.
• Stacking the high hand. Both hands must win to collect, so a superb high hand next to a hopeless low one is a push at best.

What is different about this version

The Gee Joon dual value is implemented properly — the evaluator considers both the three and the six and takes whichever produces the stronger hand, rather than fixing it at one value. That flexibility is the most distinctive rule in the game and the one simplified versions most often drop.

Pair strength is stored as its own explicit ordering separate from point value, because the traditional ranking genuinely cannot be derived from the tiles’ numbers. Wong and Gong are detected as distinct categories rather than folded into point totals, so the hierarchy matches how the game is actually played.

Written by the Silverweb Games team from this game’s own implementation. Last reviewed July 31, 2026.