I first saw Face Up Pai Gow Poker at Circus Circus in August 2018. This variant takes the 5% commission out of the game. The dealer sets the house hand first. Players then set their hand against the exposed house one. If the banker has an ace-high pai gow, the hand ends in a push.
The house edge of Face Up Pai Gow Poker is 1.8%. A standard 5% commission pai gow game has a house edge of 2.7%. This may seem like a deal for players. However, Face Up Pai Gow Poker plays faster than a standard pai gow poker game. This makes the expected hourly loss higher at face up versions like Emperor’s Exposed and Face Up Pai Gow Poker.
We did not track the differences between pai gow poker games when all were 5% commission tables. Once Face Up Pai Gow Poker gained steam, we started to break the games down. That was for the survey released in January 2020. At that time, 53.8% of pai gow games were a face up version. It became 64.9% in January 2021. It moved up to 77.6% in October 2021 and 82.9% in March 2022.
The charts below show the types of Las Vegas pai gow poker games that we found since January 2020. The first chart is the entire market. The other three cover the Strip, downtown Las Vegas and the locals markets.
Las Vegas Table Game Survey
We are able to provide detailed pai gow poker statistics because we cover all 71 Las Vegas casinos that deal table games. We publish our findings in the Vegas Advantage Newsletter. You can help support our independent Las Vegas gaming coverage by purchasing it here.
Face up games now make up over 80% of Las Vegas pai gow market
The charts below show the types of Las Vegas pai gow poker games that we found in our March 2022 survey. The first one is the entire market. The other three cover the Strip, downtown Las Vegas and the locals markets.
Pandemic affected more than Face Up Pai Gow games
Face Up Pai Gow Poker seemed to be helped by restrictions caused by the pandemic. Some casinos dealt all cards face up to players so that they were not able to touch the cards in the early days of reopening.
Another issue seems to be that pai gow poker tables in general are declining. This started after the pandemic reopening. Before that, we consistently counted around 170 pai gow poker tables in the Las Vegas market. In January 2021, we counted 154. That number dropped to 143 in October 2021. It was 146 in March 2022. We also noticed that pai gow poker minimum bets are generally about double what they were five years ago.
Pai gow tiles
Pai gow tiles is like the poker version, but with tiles. It is not nearly as popular. We first started counting this type of table game in 2014. It was dealt at Harrah’s, Rio and Treasure Island. By the end of 2016, we also found it at Aria and Palace Station. Pai gow tiles grew to Bellagio and MGM Grand by 2018.
Wynn added it later that year. It hit the Encore Asian game pit in 2020 and remained through 2021. That pit at Encore was missing due to a poker tournament during our 2022 survey.
Sic bo
Sic bo is another game that can be found in Asian table game pits. We have only found two live installations in our years of collecting Las Vegas table game data. Circus Circus dealt it for $3 in 2014 and 2015. After that, Venetian had it for $5 for a couple of years. When the stadium gaming arrived at Venetian, sic bo was found on it for about a year.
There are two places to play video sic bo in Las Vegas today. One is at Venetian. It plays more like a slot machine with multipliers and random jackpots. A realistic version of the game is available at Resorts World. It looks identical to the heads up craps games that have appeared throughout Las Vegas.
Asia Poker
Asia Poker made our first Las Vegas Table Game survey in 2014. It was dealt at Paris with a $25 minimum bet. We found it for $10 at Gold Coast in 2017. In 2020, it vanished from Gold Coast. In 2021, it went missing at Paris. Asia Poker is no longer dealt in Las Vegas. However, it is still available at two casinos in Atlantic City.
