Question of the Day - 29 June 2021

You're right that the Chinese dominoes game of pai gow is ancient. The first recorded mention of it dates as far back as 960, which makes it more than 1,000 years old. 

Pai Gow Poker, as you also surmise, was invented in 1985 by Sam Torosian. Sam was the owner of the Bell Card Club -- a card room no longer in business -- in California. Torosian had invested heavily ($750,000) in the card room, but there was barely enough traffic to keep the doors open. And he wasn't alone. A summit meeting of southern California card-room owners was convened at the Bicycle Club and it was determined that new games were needed. By law, they could offer only draw poker, low-ball, and panguingue ("pan") back then. Rather than wait for the legislature to approve additional games, Torosian took the initiative.

One of his customers mentioned a Chinese game called Puy Soy. In it, 13 cards were dealt, then divided into three hands, similar to Pai Gow tiles. That sounded too slow for Torosian, so he devised a variant using seven cards, divided into a hand of five and one of two cards. The joker was also in play, functioning as a wild card in certain straights. A player who could beat the banker’s two hands would win.

Some skeptics say Torosian came up with a game that had long been played in the gambling dens of New York’s Chinatown, but no one ever came forward to challenge his claim to fame. "With any game, there are always roots of dispute. Some people emphatically say he did it, and others say it was already out there," Mikohn Gaming General Manager Bob Parente told the Los Angeles Times. "But [Torosian] is the only guy we can actually pinpoint that is directly attributable to this game … At a minimum, he built the market and visibility."

Regardless of its originality, Torosian had a hit on his hands, going from two Pai Gow tables on opening night to 30 in the space of a week. There was so much demand for Pai Gow poker that Torosian was adding tables in hallways and next to the restrooms. Other California card clubs, notably the Bicycle Club, were quick to adopt it. 

Its low house edge contributed to its fast acceptance. Pai Gow Poker also contained a quirk whereby a hand known as "the wheel" (ace, two, three, four, five) was the second-highest straight. "Some casinos have dropped this ridiculous rule, but most still cling to it," reports Michael "Wizard of Odds" Shackleford.

Pai Gow poker arrived in Las Vegas in 1986, one year after its invention by Torosian. Here, too, it quickly caught fire and it has been a popular game ever since.

The sad postscript to the story is that Torosian never saw a dime off his invention. He was the victim of bad legal advice; a lawyer told him that a game predicated on a 52-card deck could not be patented. Torosian got the same bum steer from poker expert Michael Caro, further disheartening him. Consequently, Torosian didn’t try to get Pai Gow poker patented. And when other card rooms – and eventually big casinos – started picking up the game and profiting from it, all Torosian could do was read ‘em and weep as Caribbean Stud poker, Let It Ride, no-bust blackjack, and even variations on his own game were patented.

"Demoralized and battered by debts and partner disputes, he eventually closed his club," reported the Times. With casino-game inventors earning their royalties based on the number of "installs, or tables offering their game, the conservative estimate is that Torosian could have earned $70,000 a month from a patent and might even have been worth $100 million by the turn of the century.

Instead, casinos and card rooms -- not only in the U.S., but globally -- are making a bundle off Pai Gow Poker, free and clear.