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# Pai Gow Poker internals
Builder-facing table configuration and the published Fortune pay table
live in [../building_guide/pai_gow.md](../building_guide/pai_gow.md).
This page covers the engine side: hand evaluation, the house way,
settlement and the Joker art.
## Hand evaluation
The Joker is partially wild: an ace, or any missing card completing a
straight, flush or straight flush. Five aces beats a royal flush. A2345
is the second-highest straight (and straight flush), below TJQKA but above
9TJQK. Low hands recognize only pairs and high cards. Suits do not break
ties. Copies lose to the dealer. The high hand must strictly outrank the
low hand.
## House way
This is a **local, deterministic house way**, not a claim to reproduce a
particular casino's proprietary chart or optimal player strategy:
1. Enumerate the 21 possible splits and discard fouls.
2. Preserve the strongest available high-hand category.
3. With two pair or a full house available, also allow splits leaving at
least a pair high and a pair low.
4. Maximize the low hand among these options, then the high hand.
The dealer and automatic player setting use precisely the same algorithm.
Published main-game house-edge estimates using other house ways do not
necessarily apply to this implementation.
## Fortune / Envy mathematics
Of the eight published fixed tables compared on the Wizard of Odds page,
table 8 (the one configured here) has the lowest house edge: 4.4292%
before Envy, about 0.08% with six players each betting five. With Envy
disabled, quads improve from 25:1 to 30:1, a custom local schedule
lowering the published no-Envy edge by about 0.9974 percentage points to
3.4318%. These are published theoretical side-bet figures, not a
simulation of this server; Envy value depends on occupancy and wager size.
## Face Up mechanics
The dealer sets and reveals before players act; the automatic ace-high
push is checked against the dealer's best five-card hand (`pgDealerPush`),
so ace pairs and ace-headed flushes do not trigger it. Push Ace High
classes are resolved by `pgPushAceClass`: a Joker in the dealer's seven
cards pays the Joker rate (a natural ace plus the Joker makes a pair of
aces, which is NOT ace-high); otherwise 40:1 when the player is also
ace-high, else the plain rate.
## Settlement
Main, Fortune, Envy and Push Ace High settle in a single wallet
transaction per player. Failed settlements freeze the result and block
the next deal; `settle` or the table tick retries payment, never redraws.
Successful recipients are not paid twice. Shutdown uses the existing
durable stake-refund mechanism.
## Joker art
The shared Joker is rank `JK`, suit `joker`. `data/cards.yaml` supplies
`JK` artwork at sizes 1/5/7/9; `internal/game/render_joker.go` also has
ASCII and no-store fallbacks, including dark/light styles. Existing Joker
Poker video poker uses the same art.
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