Texas Tourist Strikes it Rich in Vegas With $897,000 Pai Gow Jackpot at Palms Casino

Over the weekend, a guest from Garland, Texas struck gold—well, hearts actually—at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas while playing Face-Up Pai Gow Poker. Visiting Las Vegas for the first time, this lucky Club Serrano member managed to pull off one of the rarest hands in casino poker: a seven-card straight flush in hearts, jack-high. That miraculous hand triggered a massive progressive jackpot, awarding a jaw-dropping $897,000.

If you’re thinking, “Wait… seven-card straight flush?” you’re not alone. This isn’t your everyday poker win—it’s a near-mythical hand in a game that’s already considered pretty niche. While Pai Gow Poker has its fans, it’s not a variant everyone’s familiar with. Unlike most table poker, the player gets two hands, one with five cards and the other with two. Combined, they allow for jackpots that pay out on strong seven-card hands, including the elusive seven-card straight flush.

If you’re not planning a trip to Vegas any time soon, you can try Pai Gow online. Unfortunately, because it’s a less popular game, you won’t find any live dealer versions of it all. The only RNG-based version that you’ll find at US online casinos is Fortune Pai Gow by Light & Wonder. Thankfully, it’s widely available on most of the top online casino platforms, including BetMGM, Caesars Palace, and DraftKings.

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How This Win Compares to Other Giant Jackpots

To put this $897k Pai Gow payout into context, we’ve seen some absolutely enormous progressive jackpots in both retail and online casinos. The biggest in U.S. history? That honor goes to a Mega Millions slot at the Excalibur in Vegas, where a player snagged nearly $40 million back in 2003.

Online progressive jackpots can be huge too. The current record is held by DraftKings, which awarded $9.3 million on its linked jackpot to a player in Michigan this February. It’s also about to beat its own record, with a new jackpot that’s already approaching $9.5 million.

Still, nearly $900,000 for a table game—not a slot—is rare territory. Especially for something as niche as Pai Gow Poker.

You won’t quite be able to replicate that feat playing online, but you could come close. Light & Wonder’s Fortune Pai Gow doesn’t include a progressive jackpot, but the seven-card Fortune Bonus offers some pretty hefty payouts. A 7-Card Straight Flush, the very unicorn our Vegas visitor caught, pays 8000:1. The game’s maximum bet is $100, so a brave and lucky player could potentially win up to $800,000 on a single hand, pretty close to this Las Vegas jackpot.

Of course, there’s a reason such wins are so rare: the odds of landing a 7-card straight flush are astronomical—about 1 in 4.8 million, according to Wizard of Odds. That’s about as likely as flipping a coin and getting 22 heads in a row. But this story goes to show that it can happen, just not often.

Pai Gow Poker: How It Works (and Why It’s Fun)

If you’re not familiar with Pai Gow Poker, you’re not alone. The game is based on a Chinese domino game called Pai Gow, but with a poker twist. Each player gets seven cards and needs to make two poker hands: a five-card “high” hand and a two-card “low” hand. The goal? Beat both of the dealer’s hands.

Sounds simple enough, right? The catch is in how you split your cards. If you put a stronger pair in your two-card hand and leave the five-card hand weak, you risk losing both. If you go the other way, you might end up with one win and one loss—which results in a push. It’s a delicate balancing act that rewards logic and strategy over blind luck (unless you’re hitting seven-card straight flushes, of course).

What makes Pai Gow Poker particularly appealing for casual players is its slower pace and high number of pushes, which means your bankroll lasts longer—great for those who enjoy stretching out a session.

This post was written with the help of ChatGPT, with extensive human input and editing.