One way to celebrate the Chinese New Year at online casinos is by wagering on Chinese themed online pokies. But you could also try a poker based table game of Chinese origin. Pai Gow Poker was played in ancient China using tiles. It was adapted for land casinos by using playing cards instead of tiles. Then it was adapted for online casinos, where each player competes alone against the dealer.
Pai Gow Poker is a single hand game at Australian online casinos. The Pai Gow Poker deck consists of 53 cards, with the extra card being a joker. You start the game as usual by placing the ante wager. Check out the minimum and maximum table limits offered by your Australian online casino. You then initiate the Pai Gow Poker game by clicking on the Deal button. You will be dealt seven cards face up while the dealer will be dealt seven cards face down. You have to split the seven cards into one five-card hand and one two-card hand. The five-card hand follows the normal poker hand rankings. The highest ranked two-card hand is a pair. Then ranks of the cards come into play. There are no straights or flushes. You have to make sure that the two-card hand has a lower hand ranking than the five card hand. The joker can be used as a wild card only in order to make a straight or a flush. Otherwise it functions as an ace.
If you are a skilled player then you can split the hands manually. Usually this is done by clicking on the cards you want in the two-card hand. But for most players the safer option is to activate the house way. This automatically creates the two hands using the optimum strategy and you will not make mistakes that way. You can first use the manual option and check your result using the house way. After your hands are set, the dealer’s cards are exposed and his hands are automatically made.
The hands are then compared in the following way. Your five-card hand will be compared with the dealer’s five-card hand and your two-card hand will be compared with the dealer’s two card hand. The dealer will win tied hands. If you win both hands then you will be paid even money less a 5% commission. If you win one hand and loses the other then the bet pushes. If you lose both the hands then you lose the bet.