Pai Gow Tiles hand rankings

Ranks 1–16

Every permitted pair

Gee Joon is the only pair made from two tiles with different names and values that do not form one of the four mixed-number groups. The next 11 are visually matched pairs. The last four combine the two different ways to make nine, eight, seven or five.

Below every pair

Wongs, Gongs and High Nines

The nine, eight or seven may be either tile with that point value. The identity of Teen or Day decides the stronger version.

Ordinary point hands

Add the dots and keep the final digit. Nine is best; zero is worst. A total of 19 is nine, while 10 and 20 are zero.

When both hands have the same total

The hand containing the higher-ranked single tile wins. Teen is the highest single tile, followed by Day. Gee Joon is the lowest single-tile rank even though the two Gee Joon tiles form the highest pair.

If both hands have the same total and the same highest tile, the banker wins the copy. Under the Fallsview rules, a tied zero also goes to the banker regardless of the high tile.

Ranks at a glance

The full ranking in one table

This table puts every class in order and shows how many of the 496 possible two-tile hands fall into each one. Wongs are the rarest named hand; pairs, Gongs and High Nines each turn up 16 ways.

Examples

Wongs, Gongs and High Nines, tile by tile

Each special hand needs Teen or Day plus a tile of the right point value. There are two nine-point tiles, four eight-point tiles and four seven-point tiles in the set, so Gongs and High Nines are twice as common as Wongs.

Every combination, with the common mistakes, is on the Wongs, Gongs and High Nines guide.

Read the tiles

Worked examples

The numbers

How often each hand shows up

Across all 35,960 ways to deal four tiles from the set, this is the strongest high hand each deal can make. More than half the time you have only point hands to work with.

The full method and a downloadable CSV are on the Pai Gow Tiles odds page.

Two pairs

How rare are two pairs?

Two pairs in one four-tile deal happen in 120 of the 35,960 possible deals: 0.334%, or about 1 deal in 300. At least one pair shows up in 19.02% of deals, and the Gee Joon pair in 1.21%, about 1 in 83.

When two pairs do arrive, the usual play is one pair in each hand. Our hand-setting guide and house-way guide explain why, and the hand calculator shows every split.