Baccarat by the Numbers: Banker, Player and the Tie

Three bets, three very different costs. The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive is more than tenfold.

The three bets

Baccarat asks one question: which of two hands, Banker or Player, will finish closer to nine, or will they tie. The player does not make decisions during the hand. The drawing rules are fixed, so the only choice is where to put the money.

What each bet costs

The figures below are for a standard eight-deck game with a 5% commission on winning Banker bets, as calculated by the gambling mathematician Michael Shackleford on Wizard of Odds.

House edge is the share of each bet the casino expects to keep over the long run. On those numbers a Tie bet costs more than thirteen times as much as a Banker bet.

Why Banker is slightly better despite the commission

The drawing rules let the Banker hand act with knowledge of the Player's third card, so Banker wins a little more often than Player. The 5% commission exists to take most of that advantage back. What is left is still the lowest edge on the table.

What does not help

Scorecards that track past results, and staking systems that raise the bet after a loss, do not alter the edge on any bet. Each hand is dealt from the same rules. Doubling after losses changes the shape of the risk, trading many small wins for an occasional very large loss, but not the expected cost.