How Baccarat Works

How baccarat works is a lot less complicated than the velvet ropes suggest. You don’t make any decisions about the cards at all. You pick one of three bets, Player, Banker or Tie, and the dealer plays both hands out under fixed rules. The free CasinoCalcs baccarat calculator shows what each bet pays and costs.

How baccarat works in one round

Two hands are dealt, one called Player and one called Banker. Those are just names; you can back either, whatever seat you’re in. Each hand gets two cards, and the one closer to 9 wins.

Card values are where newcomers wobble. Aces count 1, twos to nines count face value, and tens and picture cards count zero. When a hand adds up past 9, you drop the tens digit. A 7 and an 8 make 15, which in baccarat is simply 5. A king and a 9 is 9, the best total there is.

If either hand starts on 8 or 9, that’s a natural and the round ends right there.

The third card rule

Otherwise, a third card may be dealt, and you never have to decide anything about it. Player draws on 0 to 5 and stands on 6 or 7. Banker’s rule is fiddlier and depends on Player’s third card; with a Banker total of 3, for instance, it draws unless Player’s third card was an 8. The full grid is on our baccarat third card chart. You don’t need to memorise it, since the dealer applies it for you.

Player, Banker or Tie: which bet is best?

Banker wins slightly more often, about 45.9% of hands to Player’s 44.6% in an eight-deck game, with the rest ending in a tie. Ties on a Banker or Player bet are a push, so your stake comes back.

Because Banker has that small advantage, winning Banker bets pay even money minus a 5% commission: £10 wins £9.50. Even after the commission, Banker gives the casino the smallest edge on the table at about 1.06%. Player is close behind at about 1.24%.

The Tie bet looks tempting at 8:1, but ties only come up around 9.5% of the time, and that leaves the house an edge of roughly 14%. It’s the one to leave alone.

Do scoreboards and patterns work?

Baccarat tables often show scoreboards with roads and streaks, and you’ll see players studying them like a form guide. They’re a record of what happened, nothing more. The cards don’t know there’s been a run of five Bankers. The baccarat scoreboard is fun to track with; just don’t expect it to tell you the next hand.

Side bets

Pairs, dragon bonuses and similar extras pay big multiples, but nearly all of them carry a house edge far above the main bets. The baccarat side bets calculator puts numbers on the common ones.

Try the baccarat simulator to see the edges over thousands of hands.