- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
Dragon Tiger is baccarat with the thinking removed: one card to Dragon, one to Tiger, highest card wins. The CasinoCalcs Dragon Tiger calculator above works out the exact odds for any number of decks and the house edge on every common bet. It’s free and shows what each bet costs over a session. With eight decks, a Dragon bet keeps 3.73% for the house. The tie at 8 to 1 keeps 32.77%.
Dragon Tiger odds with eight decks
| Bet | Pays | Chance it wins | House edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dragon or Tiger | 1 to 1, half back on a tie | 46.27% | 3.73% |
| Dragon or Tiger, tie loses all | 1 to 1 | 46.27% | 7.47% |
| Tie | 8 to 1 | 7.47% | 32.77% |
| Tie | 11 to 1 | 7.47% | 10.36% |
| Suited tie | 50 to 1 | 1.69% | 13.98% |
| Big / small, odd / even | 1 to 1, 7 loses | 46.15% | 7.69% |
Aces are low, kings are high, and suits don’t matter except on the suited tie. Online and live tables differ in two places: how a tie treats the main bets and what the tie pays. Read the table rules before the first bet. Those two numbers are the whole game.
Where the 3.73% comes from
Dragon and Tiger are perfectly symmetrical. If ties didn’t exist, a Dragon bet would be dead even. The house edge is the tie, and only the tie. With 416 cards in the shoe, once Dragon has its card there are 31 cards of the same rank among the 415 left, so a tie comes up 31 times in 415, about once every 13 hands. Losing half your bet on those hands works out at 0.5 × 7.47% = 3.73%.
That’s also why the number of decks barely matters. One deck: a tie is 3 in 51, edge 2.94%. Six decks: 3.70%. Eight: 3.73%. Fewer decks is slightly better, but live tables almost always run eight.
Is there a Dragon Tiger strategy?
Not in the sense of choices that change the edge. There’s no drawing, no standing, nothing to decide once the bet’s down. Tracking the shoe makes no practical difference either: with eight decks, the run of cards would have to be extreme before a tie bet became fair, and tables reshuffle long before that. What you can control is which bet you make. Dragon or Tiger at 3.73% is a fair bit cheaper than any of the side bets. If you like the feel, baccarat is cheaper still: 1.06% on the banker.
At £10 a hand and around 100 hands an hour on a fast live table, Dragon costs about £37 an hour on average. The tie at 8 to 1 would cost about £328.
Another one-card live game: the Andar Bahar calculator has the odds of both sides and every side bet, and the Hi-Lo calculator prices higher or lower on the next card.
Fast games burn through a budget fastest. Decide yours before you sit down. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential.