The History Of Pai Gow

Tracing its roots to ancient Chinese gaming, Pai Gow isliterally translated as "make nine". Pai Gow is a Chinese game,believed to be thousands of years old, and played with Chinesedomino tile sets. The beauty of Pai Gow has attracted thecuriosity of gaming audiences in cities such as Nevada andCalifornia.

In ancient Chinese, the translation of p'ai is a term designatedboth for cards and dominoes. The reason for the use on bothobjects is that there is no main difference between dominoes andcards in China. During the early Chinese dynasties, dominoes areprecisely used as cards. Dominoes are packed and treated thesame way as cards.

Prior to the birth of Pai Gow, there were already two oldChinese gambling games that may have been the reason for thedevelopment of Pai Gow. They are yu-p'u and yeh-tza. Someplayers consider the two games as card games. There are others,however, who consider that the game of yu-p'u to be similar to amodern poker dice or something similar to it. Only the game ofyeh-tza might be considered as a card game since it literallymeans leaves. Many authors believe that the possibility of usingleaves as cards is very apparent.

The movement of time and the availability of new materials pavedthe way for the formation Ku P'ai, which curiously resembles agame using dominoes. It is further believed that yu-p'u, theancient form of gambling considered as poker dice game, is theroot of Chinese domino games. A domino, after all, is nothingbut a pair of dice placed side by side. Chinese dominoes, whichcould be traced from the writings during Song Dynasty (1120 AD),have developed since then. They are used in several tile-basedgames, namely, Pai Gow, Tien Gow, Gwat Pai, Che Deng, Tiu U, KapTai Shap.

Pai Gow today is played very similar to many existing cardgames. The only main difference is that domino tiles are usedinstead of cards. The similarities to card games such as pokercould make Pai Gow something to be enjoyed as a recreationalcard game. There is no doubt about it; those who begin to learnPai Gow often end up becoming more than enthusiastic about thegame. After all, it only takes a very short time to realize thebeauty and ease in playing this popular Chinese game.

The popularity of Pai Gow has ushered into the development ofPai Gow Poker, an American version of the popular Chinese PaiGow. It is a game played using cards, instead of the traditionaldominoes, and is growing in popularity in various casinos as asource of amusement and fun.