Posted on November 25th, 2025

The Tiles Traveler

Very often we get the pleasure of working with international students from all over the world, but seldom do we get the opportunity to engage with students from elsewhere in our own country. There isn't much point in traveling to Vegas to learn table games if you aren't going to be dealing here— or so you'd think.

Just last week, we had an incredible chance to meet a dealer from Chicago who was in town for a few days looking to refine his Paigow Tiles skills. His name is Gerardo and I would come to know him as somewhat of a nomadic samurai. Ambitious and determined, Gerardo travels around the country learning everything he can from many great instructors of their respective cities to become the most proficient dealer of the United States. Pardon my lack of professionalism, but that's pretty damn cool.

Gerardo came to us with a lot of knowledge in the game already (and even knew most, if not all the chinese correlated with it), but hadn't felt confident in his ability due to the fact there weren't any experienced instructors in his casino. Much to our surprise, he notified us the person teaching him Tiles had never even dealt the game! Remarkably, his passion for the game was clearly evident, as he knew many and most of the hands in the game (which in my opinion, are completely random with no rhyme or reason).

We were blessed to be joined by Max who, in my opinion, is one of the best Tiles Dealers in the entire desert. His aptitude for Tiles was immediately on display as he demonstrated what he called the "2 Second Drill", which consisted of flipping the tiles and being able to establish a house hand within 2 seconds. If you have any knowledge of Paigow Cards (not Tiles), try out the 2 Second Drill and then imagine how much more difficult it is with borderline random Tile combinations.

I was further blown away by the different "levels" of each number, as Max called them. There are quite literally 6, 7, 8, or even 9 different "levels" of each combination to resolve Tie situations. If your Nine pair is the 5th strongest, and my Nine pair is the 2nd, then I would win. It's on the Dealer to know all of these situations by heart, which results in borderline memorization of more than 136 different sets of possible hands, most likely more. How do you resolve any Tie without knowing the 1st from the 9th pair of Eights? Quite difficult I would imagine.

Although I was having trouble keeping up, Max has a clear and concise way of teaching and coupled with my handy notebook, I was able to learn much of what takes people many weeks in just 2 days. Of course, a lot of work had to be done at home; studying different combinations of hands and running myself through Max's many drills. But determination, along with my background in Baccarat and Paigow Cards, helped me quickly find patterns and expedited this process greatly. Gerardo, much to the same effect, was able to greatly improve his skills. On his last day, he was much faster at establishing house hands and a noticeably more confident in his own abilities.

Despite his short time in Vegas, meeting Gerardo was a memorable and pleasant experience. It was interesting to hear the different styles of dealing he had come across during his travels— even the way his casino operated was surprisingly different than many casinos here. It's easy to think of Vegas as the standard for Casino Operations, so it's pleasing that the industry is still evolving. It's best to adapt to the ever changing landscape of the trade and we must never think there are no improvements to be made.

Signing off,

Michael

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