pai gow poker

Game starting
Tiles are put on the table in a random order, and are combined in eight stacks of four tiles each known as the woodpile (in an assembly). Various shuffles, rearranging the tiles in the woodpile are made in standard ways. And as a result new woodpile is formed. Then everybody makes his bet. After that, each player is given four tiles with which to make two hands of two tiles each. The lowest-value hand is called the front hand, and the highest-value one – the rear hand. In case dealer's front hand is beaten by a player's front hand, and the player's rear hand beats the dealer's rear hand, then that player is the winner. If a player's both hands lose to the dealer's respective hands, then the player loses. If one hand wins and the other loses, the player gets back the money he or she have bet. Generally the game is played by 7 players, and the hands of each player are compared against the hands of the dealer only.

Scoring basics
The name "pai gow" means "make nine" in English. This is due to the fact that the best a hand can score is nine. To find out what the value of a hand is, simply add the total number of pips on the two tiles, and drop the tens place. So for example, a 1-3 tile used with a 2-3 tile will score nine (total number of pips). A 2-3 tile + 5-6 tile will score six instead of and sixteen, because you drop the ten. And a 2-3 tile with a 1-4 tile will score zero as 5+5=10 (you drop the 1 and get 0 as a result).

Wongs and Gongs
There are some special ways a hand to score 9+. The double-one is known as a "Day tile" and double-six - as a "Teen tile". If a Teen or Day tile is combined with an 8, then the pair is worth 10 instead of 0. (This is called a Gong.) If a Teen or Day tile is used with a 9, the hand is worth 11. (This is called a Wong.) But only eights and nines can be combined with Days or Teens so a Day or Teen tile used with a ten is only worth two, but not twelve.

Gee Joon tiles
The 1-2 and the 2-4 tiles are known as GeeJoon. Either tile can count as 3 or 6, whichever scores more.

Pairs
The 32 tiles in a standart set of dominoes can be arranged into 16 pairs. Eleven of these pairs have identical tiles, and the other five of these pairs just look different as are made up of two tiles but score the same. If a hand is made up of a pair, it always scores higher than a non-pair, no matter what the value of the pips are.
The highest pairs are the Gee Joon tiles, the Teens, the Days, and the red eights.

Ties
Sometimes one of a player's hands can have the same score compared to one of the dealer's hands. For instance, a player may have a front hand worth one point, consisting of a 3-4 tile and a 2-2 tile, and the dealer may have a front hand also worth one point, made up of a 5-6 tile and a 5-5 tile. In these cases (as mentioned bove) the 2-2 tile is in a higher-ranking...