Pai Gow Poker Strategy for Two Pair Hands

March 30, 2014 by

pai-gow-poker-strategyDespite the fact that they come up fairly often, the most difficult hands to learn to play in pai gow poker are the two pair hands. Playing with a single pair or a high card hand is easy to play with simple and intuitive algorithms. Along similar lines, playing three of a kind or better rarely creates situations where you can make large mistakes. However, it can be particularly difficult to play with two pair hands because there are so many factors that come into play. We want to show you the right pai gow poker strategy for these hands.

Guidelines for Two Pair Pai Gow Poker Strategy

Your options in this situation are to either keep your pairs together or to split up your pairs. There are two main pieces of information that will be needed for you to know whether to split the pairs or not. The first piece of information is the best high-card hand that you can play without splitting up your pairs. The second piece of information is the value of those two pairs themselves.

Start off by adding together the values of the pairs. Jacks count as 11, queens count as 12, kings count as 13, and aces count as 14. So if you have a pair of nines and a pair of jacks, your score would be 20. If your score is 17 or higher, then you’re always going to split the pairs no matter what. If your score is 16 or lower, then it depends on what your best possible high-card hand will be.

The Three Ranges of High Card Hands

When your score is between 12 and 16, then you’ll want to keep your two pair if and only if you have an unpaired ace in your hand. With a score between 7 and 11, you’ll keep your two pairs together if you have an paired ace or king. When your score is 6 and lower, you’ll only keep the two pairs together if you have an unpaired queen, king or ace. This is all you need to know for playing these hands correctly.

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