"California games" definition

A set of cardroom games, formerly called Asian games, some of which resemble poker, but are not strictly poker, in which players place bets before receiving the hands on which they wager; others resemble blackjack. In these games, to get around the legal restriction against banking games, the only interest the house has is to take a portion of every bet; one player acts as banker, playing one hand against each player in turn. These games include pai gow (played with tiles, and not a card game at all), pai gow poker, super nine (also called super pan nine), California blackjack (also called X blackjack, where X is the name of the club), California Aces (a variant of blackjack in which the object is to get closest to 22, with two aces being the best hand; similarly often called X aces), 13-card (not played with a banker).