Pi Gow Poker
  
  Contrary to popular opinion, Pi Gow Poker is not an "ancient game" (a term that I've actually seen printed on the information cards handed out at a couple of Seattle area Casinos) but was rather designed by Mike Kiro in the late '70s as an alternative game and renamed and adapted as a method of getting existing poker players interested in the game of Pi Gow (this is truly an ancient game played with tiles which is a derivative of Mah Johng), when it was accepted as a game of skill into the card rooms of Southern California in the mid '80s.    
  The Play goes like this: The dealing is handled by the house but there is a "bank" button that rotates around the table according to house rules (usually it advances with each new deal but I have seen at least one house where it only advances after a bank loss). The person holding the "bank" button has the option of banking the hand by putting up a sufficient amount of chips to cover all of the "player" bets on the table, including a bet from the dealer using the house's money. The house will bank any hand that is declined by the player holding the button (most often the case). The house rules are subject to change (as is the "house way" of playing each hand) and should be checked. The last time I played there, for instance, at The Stardust in Las Vegas, any player could request to bank the hand at any time before the cards were dealt.    
  Each player position including the dealer is dealt 7 cards (any hand dealt to an empty seat, defined as a seat that doesn't have a bet in front of it, is picked up and placed in the discard pile before play commences.    
  At this point, all the active players, with the exception of the banker (the person who is actually banking the hand), will pick up there cards and "set" them into the most advantageous 2 hands that they can. This is done by making one 5 card hand and one 2 card hand from the 7 cards that have been dealt to you.    
 

Ground rules: The "big" (5 card) hand must be stronger than the "small" (2 card) hand, i.e. if you have no pair, no flush and no straight, the highest card must be in the big hand. If you have two pair (and decide that the best play is to split them) the larger pair must be in the big hand.

To win you must beat both of the banker's hands, if you split i.e. you beat the banker with your big hand but loose to the bankers small hand then you push and there is no action.

The banker wins all ties, i.e. if your small hand is: Ad, Ks and the banker's small hand is: As, Kh, the banker wins the small hand, if your big hand is: As, Ks, Qs, Js, 10s and the banker's big hand is: Ah, Kh, Qh, Jh, 10h, the banker wins the big hand. This is the only "banker advantage" (read that as house advantage, as the house banks the majority of hands).

    
  With good play expect to push at least 50% of the time. This coupled with the low "house advantage" makes this a poor game for building up playing credit for the comp program unless you tend to sit for long periods of time, and play with relatively large bets (as I do). I once bought into a game of Pi Gow Poker (at the Stardust in Las Vegas) with $100 at around 10:00 in the morning, by 12:30 pm when my wife walked up and sat down my stack was at a bit over $300. I gave my wife $100 from my stack to buy in, we broke for dinner (comped) at around 8:30 pm and again for breakfast (also comped) at around 4:00 am and cashed in for $1,700+ shortly after 8:00 am, giving us a total of 42 hours at the table (my wife's name is also on my card so our accumulated play goes into the same account, this is only a good idea if both parties are strong players and bet about the same amounts) which got us comped for the 3 nights of our stay and our room service bills (in this instance I was playing a flat $50 a hand and my wife varied from $30 to $50 so we averaged $45 per hand at the rate of 30 hands an hour for the 42 hours or $56,700 in action, Pie Gow Poker is only given 1/2 credit for player hours which means we were credited with $28,350 in action while winning a little over $1,600).    
 
Required Reading
    
  As always I advocate a complete education. Some of the best books that I've found on Poker are: Caro's Fundamental Secrets of Winning Poker and The Body Language of Poker: Mike Caro's Book of Tells.