We’ve finally arrived at the final installment of our Blackjack terms series. We’re about to bring it all together. It’s been a fun ride. Once you finish this series, consider yourself a Blackjack terms expert. Let’s go.

Session - This term is used most when talking about money management. A session is a period of time spent gambling.

Shill - These guys are casino employees. To facilitate action, a shill will go up to a table-usually an empty one-and play. The idea is that if you’re walking around and see action, you’ll play. Shills are more likely to be used at a Craps table, because not many people like being the only player in Craps.

Soft Hand - This is any hand where an Ace is being used as an 11.

Stand - When you’re happy with your hand, you can stand, which ends your turn.

Surrender - Some casinos allow you to surrender. When you surrender, you throw in your hand and get half your wager back. A common surrender situation is when you have a hard 16 and the dealer has a face card showing.

Third Base - It’s the opposite of first base. Third base is the last seat to get cards. If the table is full, it will be the seat immediately to the dealer’s right hand.

Toke - Also called a tip. Dealers work for tips, so they love players who tip them. One common way to tip in Blackjack is to place a bet for the dealer. You do this by placing your tip bet above your wager on the layout. Let the dealer know it’s for him/her, so they can make sure the placement is right. This is a good way to get the dealer to root for you.

True Count - It’s another card counting term. When there are multiple decks, you take the running count and divide it by the number of decks being used. This gives you a more accurate picture.

Up Card - The dealer gets two cards in Blackjack to start with. The Up Card is the card that you can see. The bottom one you can’t see is called a hole card.

Unit - A measurement of betting. For instance, a unit could be $5, $10, $1 or whatever.

Vig - This is the money that goes to the house. A popular vig in sports betting, for example, is 10%.

Whale - This is the big-time player-the high roller. Casinos-and dealers-love to see a whale coming. It usually means there’s a chance for a nice payday.

And there you have it. We’ve come to the end of our Blackjack terms series. Do you feel like a Blackjack terms expert now? We’ve covered a lot of ground in this series.

Good luck at the tables!

We’re moving right along with our Pai Gow series. You’re almost a professional Pai Gow player now. Since you know most of the game play, it’s now time to talk about the hand rankings Pai Gow. After all, it doesn’t make much sense to play if you don’t understand what makes a winning hand.

Five Aces

Unlike traditional poker-based games where the Royal Flush is king, in Pai Gow, the five aces hand is trump. Getting five aces is tough and there’s only one way to do it. You need to get all four aces in the deck and the joker.

Royal Flush

To get a royal flush, you must have the 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of one suit-like Clubs. The Joker can be used in place of the Ace.

Straight Flush

The straight flush consists of five cards in sequential order that are all of the same suit. Here’s an important note. In Pai Gow, the A-5 straight flush is the highest ranking straight and the King-high straight flush is the second highest.

Four of a Kind

To get a four of a kind, you need four cards of the same rank, such as four Jacks. Remember, the Joker can be used as an Ace.

Full House

When you have three cards of one rank and two cards of another rank-like three Jacks and two Queens-you have a full house. Should both you and the Banker have a full house, the player with the highest-ranking three set of cards wins. The pair won’t matter.

Flush

Five cards that are all of the same suit and not in sequential order is a flush hand. The Joker can be used as an Ace of any suit, so if you have the Joker, you just need four cards of the same suit.

Straight

When you have five cards in sequential order and they are of more than one suit, you have a straight. If they were all the same suit, you’d have a straight flush. The Ace can be used at the front, such as A 2 3 4 5, or the end, such as 10 J Q K A.

Three of a Kind

Simply put, three cards of the same rank is a three of a kind hand-like AAA.

Two Pair

You have this hand when you have two cards of one rank and two cards of another rank, such as: JJ KK.

One Pair

Having two cards of the same rank is having one pair-like 44.

High Card

Finally, if you have absolutely nothing above, you have a high card hand. This is the worst hand in Pai Gow.

When you’re setting your 2nd highest hand, which consists of just two cards, you’ll have either a high card hand or one pair. Needless to say, when you have one pair as your 2nd highest hand, you have a great shot at winning that hand.

And there you have it. You’re now ready to take on the Pai Gow playing world. In our final article on playing Pai Gow, we’ll go over a couple of quick strategy tips.

Today’s lesson will deal with setting your hand. We’ve already got the game flow down. In another article, we’ll go over strategy a bit more. Setting your hand is the main function in Pai Gow. Don’t worry if you don’t know how Pai Gow hands rank, because that’s the next part of this series.

In Pai Gow, the Ace can be used at the front or end of the deck. For instance, it could be used as Ace, two, three or Queen, King, Ace. The Joker can be used as an Ace or to complete a straight, flush or straight flush.

Once you have your seven cards, I find it’s best for beginners to sort their cards from highest to lowest or lowest to highest. If you’re playing Pai Gow online, this might already be done for you. Remember, we’re going to be creating two hands from these seven cards-the highest hand, which is five cards and the 2nd highest hand, which are the remaining two cards.

When you make your hands, the highest hand must actually be the highest hand. For instance, let’s say your hand is: J J 3 4 5 Q Q.

You couldn’t make your 2nd highest hand be QQ, because the highest hand would be JJ 3 4 5 and it wouldn’t actually be the highest hand.

Let’s keep that example going. Part of the strategy in Pai Gow is figuring out how best to set your hands. In our example, we could do something like JJ QQ 3 and 4 5 or something like JJ 3 4 5 and QQ. So, we’d either have two pair and nothing or one pair in each hand. Remember, if you can win at least one of the hands, you keep your cash.

Once you have decided how to set your hand, you place each of the two hands on their appropriate space on the table. Online Pai Gow players will have this done for them.

I can’t reiterate this enough: don’t take setting your hand too lightly. It’s a strategic game. Ideally, you want your second highest hand to be as high as possible, so you can at least force a push.

If your second highest hand won’t have a pair, put the two highest ranking cards in there-out of what’s left. Let’s say your hand is: J J A Q 4 8 3.

For the above hand, we’d want to keep the pair of Jacks in the highest hand. That leaves us with the Ace, Queen, 4, 8 and 3. It would be best to take the Ace and Queen and put those two cards in the second highest hand.

Now that we have a basic understanding with setting hands, it’s time to go over hand rankings. We’ll do that in the next article.

In a recent article, I talked about how I love to play Pai Gow and I gave you a little intro into the game. Today, I’m starting a beginner’s series on how to play Pai Gow. It’s an easy game to learn and we’ll take our time-going over everything in detail.

Quick Recap

Pai Gow is played with your typical 52-card deck and one joker card. You’ll receive seven cards and you’ll divide them into two hands. Your job is to beat the bank’s hand and as a player, you’ll have the chance to be the bank-unless the casino doesn’t offer that option.

Getting Started

The invention and growth of online casinos has really helped the low-limit Pai Gow players. It used to be that you’d have a tough time finding a Pai Gow game lower than $10 and even $10 Pai Gow games were hard.

Today, you can just jump online and find $5 Pai Gow games all over the Internet.

After you make your wager-and other player’s do the same-the dealer shuffles up the deck and deals out seven cards per hand spot. It’s important to note that the entire deck is used for each hand-unlike Blackjack where you just keep playing through the deck until it’s gone.

After this is complete, the hands at the spots where there are no players are taken. Yes, the dealer deals to empty spots. This is part of the game play. So, unlike Blackjack where players coming and going can affect hands, it doesn’t matter in Pai Gow.

We’ll talk about the bank later, but now that the hands are dealt and the bank is decided, it’s time to examine your hand. You’re going to break up your seven cards into two hands. The first hand will consist of one five-card hand, which is your best hand. Then the remaining two cards will make up your “2nd Highest” hand.

Now, before you rush out and player, there’s one important item you need to know. Your five-card hand MUST be the highest-ranking hand or you forfeit your money. For instance, you couldn’t put two Aces are your two-card hand and then have a pair of 2s as your five-card hand.

The strategy comes in decided how far to go. For instance, do you go with two pair as your highest hand and nothing as your 2nd highest hand or do you break them up? We’ll go over Pai Gow strategy in other articles.

Time To Win

Once all the hands are set, meaning they’ve all been split into the highest and 2nd highest hands, it’s time for the dealer to play. The dealer (not always the bank) will turn over the hand and set it according to casino rules.

To win, both of your hands need to beat both of the Banker’s hands. If you win one and lose one, it’s a push. Should one of your hands be exactly like one of the Banker’s hands, it’s called a “copy” and the Banker wins the hand.

In part two, we’ll continue with more on the Banker.

Three-card poker is a popular addition to the casino world that combines two games in one yet is still simple to play. The game was invented during the early nineties and has rapidly gained popularity ever since in both Internet and earthly casinos. The two parts to Three-Card Poker are called “Pairlus” and “Ante and Play”. Players can place bets on either or both of these games in each round on the same dealt hand. Play is against the dealer in Ante and against a list of winning hands in Pairlus.

Three-Card poker is played with a standard 52-card deck and the order of play for Three-Card poker is as follows: First players make their Ante and/or Pairplus bets. A player can make a bet on either or both parts to the game. The dealer then gives each player and himself three cards all dealt face down. Players can then examine their cards and play continues differently for the two parts of the game.

Players in the Ante game must decide to either fold or raise with a ‘play’ bet depending on the strength or weakness of their hands. A raise is equal to the original Ante wager. The dealer then displays his hand and compares it to the players. The dealer must qualify his hand by showing at least a queen or higher. If the dealer doesn’t qualify the player wins even money and the raised bet is pushed.

If the dealer does qualify then the higher hand wins based on an order of poker hands that is comparable to other types of poker. So for instance, a straight flush would be the highest hand and so on down through three of a kind, a straight, a flush, a pair, and a high card.

If the player’s hand beats the dealer then both the Ante and the play bets pay even money. If the dealer has the higher hand then both bets lose. A tied hand is pushed.

The Pairplus bet is paid out according to a displayed table of possible hands similar to the way video poker is paid out. The better the player’s hand ranks on the list the higher the payout and top end hands can have payouts of up to 40 to 1. There are slight variations in the payout tables at different casinos. The player’s hand is all that matters and the dealer’s cards are irrelevant.

Strategy in Three-Card poker can be quite easy. If you have a queen or better and with at least a six and a four you should raise your bet. The reason is that this hand is a borderline hand. If you are holding cards lower than the six and four your chances of losing go up by enough to not make it worth the raise.

On roughly two out of three hands the dealer will qualify so your singleton cards are important. If both the dealer and player are holding a queen it will be down to the remaining singletons to decide the hand and the six and four put you just above halfway up the rank of hands.