Pai Gow Poker

The roots date back to around 900AD in Ancient China, and while other poker games also trace back through the centuries to these early card games, Pai Gow is somewhat different in that in didn’t change that much from its original form…only that it was a game played with tiles or dominoes (later use of cards was introduced but in China, there isn’t much of a difference between cards and dominoes).

In the early Chinese dynasties dominoes were used, as there was a natural beauty in them that attracted audiences.  Exactly when the game became known as Pai Gow isn’t known, but Pai Gow Poker evolved from two Chinese gambling games: yu-p'u and yeh-tza.   Of these, Yeh-tza is considered to be a card game because of the meaning of its name (translated to English, it becomes leaves). Many authors consider the relation between leaves and cards to be apparent, so it was taken for granted that yeh-tza was a card game.

Perhaps it was the Chinese immigrants in the 1800’s that helped build the railroads and open the west that brought Pai Gow to America. Over time, the tile version was no longer played, and only the card version now known as Pai Gow Poker was left.  Quite possibly due to the overwhelming popularity of Draw Poker and Stud Poker, Pai Gow sort of waned in various sectors but remained in the gaming realm as an alternative.

The late 20th century is when the game got transformed to the current form of Pai Gow poker, which is a merge of the ancient Chinese game Pai Gow, and the modern game of poker. Pai Gow is also known as double hand poker, created in America by the team of Sam Torosian and Fred Wolf, sometime in the late 1900's.  Wolf specifically was a casino owner, motivated by the frenzy of competition among the gaming houses in California.  In addition to being a games inventor, he was the casino manager of the Commerce Casino in the early 1980's…and decided to sublet a third of the casino floor space of the Bell Club, in the city of Bell, California, to introduce his new Super Pan-9 game.

Wolf needed to innovate new gaming structures in order to overcome the competition of the larger Los Angeles area card casinos, such as the Bicycle Club and Commerce Casino, and through his creativity,  the games of Pai Gow Poker and Super Pan-9 became immediate crowd favorites…quickly spreading to the entire Californian gaming market.  Pai Gow started being featured in Las Vegas casinos in 1986…from there proceeded to Atlantic City casinos…and is now played around the world.