Baccarat odds: banker, player and tie, from the full eight-deck shoe

How a baccarat hand works

Two hands are dealt, one called the player and one the banker. The names are labels only: you can bet on either, whoever deals. Each hand starts with two cards, and the aim is a total as close to 9 as possible. Aces count 1, cards from 2 to 9 count their face value, and tens and picture cards count nothing. Only the last digit of a total matters, so a 7 and an 8 make 15, which counts as 5.

If either hand totals 8 or 9 with its first two cards, that is a natural and both hands stand. Otherwise a fixed set of rules decides whether each hand takes a third card. Nobody at the table chooses. Whichever hand ends closer to 9 wins; equal totals are a tie.

Baccarat odds for banker, player and tie

These figures come from the full count of an eight-deck shoe: every order in which the first six cards can appear, weighted by how many cards of each value are left, with the drawing rules applied to each. Our own count reproduces the published figures exactly, and an independent program repeats it.

A banker or player bet is returned when the hand ties, so its house edge is usually quoted per bet placed, pushes included. The last column shows the same cost counted only over hands that are settled, which is the figure some sources quote instead. Either way, the banker bet is the cheapest bet at the table, and among the cheapest in any casino: less than half the 2.70% of a European roulette wheel.

The third-card rules

The player hand goes first. With a two-card total of 0 to 5 it draws a third card; with 6 or 7 it stands. (With 8 or 9 on either side, nobody draws.) The banker's rule then depends on the banker's own total and, if the player drew, on the value of the player's third card:

The rows read as the dealer applies them: a banker on 4 draws if the player's third card was 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7, and stands on anything else. A banker on 7 always stands.

AI

Why the banker wins more often, and the 5% commission

The banker acts second. When the player draws, the banker's rule takes the player's third card into account, so the banker hand draws when it helps and stands when it does not. That small information advantage is worth about 1.2 percentage points: the banker wins 45.86% of hands against the player's 44.62%.

Paid at even money, the banker bet would favour the bettor. The commission fixes that. A winning banker bet pays 0.95 to 1, a tie returns the stake, and a loss costs it, so the average result per £1 is 0.95 × 0.4586 − 0.4462 = -0.0106: a loss of 1.06%. The player bet has no commission and loses 0.4586 − 0.4462 = 0.0123 per £1, which is 1.24%.

No-commission baccarat

Some tables drop the commission and change a payout instead. The most common version pays even money on every banker win except one made with a total of 6, which pays 1 to 2: half the stake as profit. It sounds generous, but it is not cheaper. From the same eight-deck count, the banker wins with a 6 in 5.39% of hands, and halving those wins costs more than the commission did:

The banker edge rises from 1.06% to 1.46%, while the player bet stays at 1.24%. Other no-commission variants use different rules; they need their own count, and the table's rules card will say which version it is.

The tie bet and the pair side bets

A tie comes up in 9.52% of hands, roughly one in 10.5. A fair price would be about 9.5 to 1. Most tables pay 8 to 1, which gives a house edge of 14.36%: 1 − 9 × 0.0952. Where it pays 9 to 1 the edge falls to 4.84%, but that is still more than four times the banker bet.

The player pair and banker pair side bets win when that hand's first two cards are the same rank, such as two kings or two sevens. With 13 ranks of 32 cards each in the shoe, the chance is 13 × 32 × 31 ÷ (416 × 415) = 7.47%. At the usual payout of 11 to 1 the house edge is 10.36%, about ten times the banker bet.

Baccarat simulator: the edge in practice

This simulator uses no money. Each round is dealt by the rules above from a freshly shuffled eight-deck shoe, the situation the exact figures describe. It counts how often banker, player and tie come up, and follows one bet to show the share of its stakes that would come back, settling towards 100% minus that bet's edge. The first 1,000 rounds are shown already.

Follow the tie and simulate a few batches of 100: the share returned swings between nothing and well over 100%, because each tie pays nine stakes. Over tens of thousands of rounds it settles near 85.64%, while the banker line hugs 98.94% far sooner.

Patterns, systems and the shoe

Baccarat tables often provide scorecards, and players track streaks of banker or player wins. The cards have no memory of those streaks. Each hand depends on what is left in the shoe, and the effect of earlier hands on the banker and player odds is tiny. Systems that raise the stake after a loss do not change the edge either; they only change how the same cost is spread across the session.

That leaves one sound rule: the banker bet is the lowest-cost bet, the player bet is close behind, and the tie and pairs are expensive. For how baccarat compares with the rest of the casino, see the house edge guide and the casino odds table; blackjack played by the book and the pass line at craps are the other low-edge bets. The method behind every figure here is on the how we calculate the odds page.

Baccarat moves quickly, and a fast game with a small edge still adds up over an evening. Keep stakes to money you can spare, and if it stops feeling like entertainment, our responsible gambling page points to free support.

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Baccarat odds: questions people ask