Real-time tracking of locations of machine-readable pai gow gaming tiles

A method of real-time tracking of Pai Gow gaming tiles to mitigate risk of dealer or player cheating behavior during game play, comprising:

• setting in a gaming environment a Pai Gow gaming table having a playing surface that includes a pre-assigned woodpile position and multiple pre-assigned player positions, the pre-assigned woodpile position in operative association with woodpile position tile tag identification readers, and the pre-assigned player positions in operative association with corresponding player position tile tag identification readers;
• providing on the table surface a Pai Gow game set of gaming tiles each of which having a machine-readable tile identifying tag that is readable by the woodpile position and player position tile tag identification readers;
• forming in the pre-assigned woodpile position a post-shuffle woodpile of multiple four-tile stacks of the gaming tiles in the Pai Gow game set, the post-shuffle woodpile arranged so that each of the multiple four-tile stacks corresponds to a specified one of the multiple pre-assigned player positions and is associated with a corresponding one of the woodpile position tile tag identification readers;
• using the woodpile position tile tag identification readers associated with their corresponding multiple four-tile stacks to read and create a record of the tile identifying tags of the gaming tiles in the multiple four-tile stacks;
• distributing the multiple four-tile stacks from the post-shuffle woodpile to the corresponding specified ones of the multiple pre-assigned player positions and using the player position tile tag identification readers associated with their corresponding multiple four-tile stacks to read the tile identifying tags of the gaming tiles distributed;
• and
• determining for the distributed multiple four-tile stacks whether there is a difference between the recorded tile identifying tags and the tile identifying tags at the corresponding pre-assigned player positions.