- Fact-checked by Josh Miller
- Edited by Diana Westfield
Chemin de fer is the baccarat from old Bond films and Riviera casinos: dinner jackets, a long oval table, and the shoe sliding from one player to the next as the bank changes hands. Punto banco is what you’ll actually sit down to today, in a casino or online, with the house as banker and every card drawn by a fixed rule. Both count to nine and both use the same card values. The difference is who holds the bank and whether anyone at the table gets to make a choice.
Chemin de fer rules: the players are the bank
In chemin de fer, the casino doesn’t bet. A player takes the bank and puts up a stake, and the others can cover all of it (“banco!”) or chip in part. Two hands are dealt: one for the banker and one for whoever bet the most against them, who plays for that whole side. The house just takes its cut, usually 5% of what the bank wins.
And there are decisions, small ones. The player’s hand draws on 0 to 4 and stands on 6 or 7, but on a 5 it’s up to them. The banker has a few close calls of their own. Nobody wins a fortune by getting them right, and the correct answers have been worked out for decades, but it gave the game its reputation as the thinking person’s baccarat. Lose a hand as banker and the shoe moves on to the next seat.
Punto banco rules: no decisions, house banks
Punto banco strips all that out. You put chips on Player, Banker or Tie, the dealer follows the third-card table to the letter, and that’s it. Once the bets are down, nobody decides anything. Which is exactly why the big casinos and online studios love it: it’s quick, easy to deal and impossible to slow down.
Because the drawing is fixed, so are the odds. In an eight-deck shoe Banker takes 45.86% of hands, Player 44.62% and the Tie 9.52%. With the usual 5% commission the Banker bet costs you 1.06%, Player 1.24%, and the Tie at 8 to 1 a painful 14.36%. Try other commission rates in the CasinoCalcs baccarat calculator, and check the third card chart if you want to follow the dealer’s draws.
Baccarat banque and other names
There’s a third cousin, baccarat banque (or à deux tableaux), where one banker takes on two player hands at the same time. Outside a few old European clubs you’ll struggle to find a table. Mini baccarat is punto banco with smaller tables and lower limits, nothing more. Whatever the sign over the table says, a Banker bet costs around 1%, which keeps baccarat among the cheapest games on the floor. For the full rules from scratch, see how baccarat works.
A low edge is still an edge. BeGambleAware.org has free support if the tables are taking more than you’d like.