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Spread your tiles on the table and shuffle them. Take 32 tiles from the spread and pile them into eight stacks of four dominoes. This is the wood pile. This is where all Pai Gow hands will originate. Players take turns making bets. They bet on whether or not they think they will win the hand. Once the dominoes are set up in the wood pile, each player and the dealer are given one stack from the wood pile. These dominoes are then randomly separated to make two hands of two dominoes apiece. Add up the dots in each hand to decide on the front and rear hand. The front hand is the hand with the lowest number of dots, while the rear hand is the hand with the higher amount of dots.
Play
Once setup has been finished, players turn over their tiles. Players do not play against each other in Pai Gow, only the dealer. Play is then very simple. The dealer will show his rear and front hands. Players must beat the dealer's hands with their respective hand. For example, a player must have a higher rear hand than the dealer as well as a higher front hand. Having a higher rear and front hand means the player wins the bet. He gets his money and the dealer's bet, which matches his, back. If one hand wins and the other loses, the player will win the money he bet back. This isn't a perfect scenario, but it is better than what happens if both hands lose. If both hands lose, the dealer takes the player's bet.
Hands
There are several different types of hands that you can form to score points. The double-one and double-six dominoes are the Day and Teen tiles. Using the Day or Teen tile with an eight-dot tile will give you 10 points. This hand is referred to as a Gong. If a Day or Teen tile is used with a nine, it is worth 11 and called a Wong. Only eights and nines can be used with the Day or Teen tiles. The 1-2 and 2-4 tiles can be considered the wild cards of Pai Gow. They are technically called the Gee June tiles. Either tile counts as a three or a six. Any identical tile makes a pair. For example, a 2-3 tile and a 3-2 tile form a pair. A pair is always higher than any non-pair hand, though the highest pair wins if there is more than one. Ties are settled by finding the highest ranking tile in each person's hand and comparing. The highest tile wins.