Seven cards, two hands, one decision.

The game is dealt from 53 cards: a standard deck plus one joker. The dealer sets out seven piles of seven, and three dice decide which seat takes the first pile. Every seat bets before the deal.

Your one decision is how to split your seven cards: five into the high hand, or back, and two into the low hand, or front. The high hand has to outrank the low hand. Set both face down and leave them on the table.

• Win both. You win even money less 5% commission, so $20 that wins both hands pays $19.
• Win one, lose one. It's a push, and pushes are common.
• Lose both. You lose the bet.
• Copies. A tie in either comparison is a copy, and copies go to the banker.

The high hand ranks like poker, with one hand above a royal flush: five aces, four aces plus the joker.

• The joker is half wild. It plays as an ace, or as any card that completes a straight, a flush or a straight flush. When it completes nothing, it's simply an ace.
• In the low hand it's always an ace. Two cards can't make a straight or a flush, so joker-king is ace-king.
• The wheel ranks second. A-2-3-4-5 is the second-highest straight here, just below the ace-high straight and above K-Q-J-T-9.

In the two-card low hand, a pair beats any two unpaired cards. Otherwise the higher card decides, then the second: ace-king beats ace-queen, and ace-two beats king-queen.

If your low hand outranks your high hand, the hand is a foul, and a foul loses the bet whatever the banker holds. A pair of queens in front of a no-pair back is a foul. A front that only matches the back's leading cards is fine; only a strictly higher low hand fouls.

The dealer sets every hand by the house way. Table Ready follows the Golden Nugget's Las Vegas house way, rule by rule. Learn it and you'll set like the dealer and never foul. The rules that cover most hands:

• No pair. Highest card in back, the next two highest in front.
• One pair. The pair stays in back and the two highest singles go in front.
• Two pair. Split when one pair is 7s or higher and there's no ace single. An ace single goes in front and usually keeps the pairs together. A pair of aces with any other pair always splits.
• Three of a kind. Trips stay in back with the two highest singles in front. Three aces split, with one ace in front.
• Full house. Split it: pair in front, trips in back.
• Straights and flushes. Keep the five-card hand in back, and choose the back that leaves the strongest front.

If you're ever unsure at a real table, ask the dealer for the house way.

A winning hand pays even money less 5%: $25 wins $23.75. Pushes and losses pay no commission. Copies and commission are where the house edge comes from; setting by the house way, it's 2.72%.

EZ Pai Gow charges no commission, so $25 wins $25. Instead, when the dealer's seven cards are a Queen-high Pai Gow, with no pair, no straight and no flush, every main bet pushes, fouls included.

At a commission table the bank is offered around the table. As banker you play every hand at the table plus one the dealer plays, you win the copies, and you pay 5% once, on what you net. The house edge falls to 0.25%, against 2.72% as a player, but you need the chips to cover the table.

Every bonus bet here costs far more than the main game:

• Fortune. Pays the best hand in your seven cards from a straight up, at a house edge of 7.77%. $5 on Fortune for 100 hands costs about $38.83.
• Envy. Pays you when another player's hand is four of a kind or better, as long as you have $5 or more on Fortune.
• Pai Gow Insurance. Pays when your seven cards make no pair, no straight and no flush, at a house edge of 13.30%.
• The progressive. A $1 bet that never comes back. At a $10,000 meter its house edge is 49.04%.

At the table, keep your cards on the felt and in sight, set them face down with the low hand in front and the high hand behind, and don't show them to other players or talk them through. One hand per seat.