Table Games
Baccarat Odds: Banker, Player, and Tie
Baccarat has three bets and no decisions. Banker is the best of them at 1.06% after commission, player is 1.24%, and the tie at 8:1 is 14.36%. Once a bet is placed nothing anyone does affects the outcome: the drawing rules are fixed and the dealer simply carries them out.
Written by the Moes Almanac editorial team
1.06%
The lowest standing bet available at any casino table — and unlike blackjack, it requires no skill at all to obtain.
How a hand is played
Two hands are dealt, called player and banker, and you bet on which will finish closer to nine. Tens and picture cards count zero, aces count one, and totals drop the tens digit — a seven and a six make thirteen, which counts as three.
Whether a third card is drawn is decided by a fixed table of rules rather than by anyone at the table. This is the whole game. "Player" and "banker" are the names of two hands, not roles: betting on banker is not betting on the house, and betting on player gives you no control over anything.
Why the banker bet needs a commission
Banker wins about 45.9% of hands, player about 44.6%, and roughly 9.5% are ties in which both bets are returned. Banker wins more often because it acts second and draws knowing what the player hand did.
Left alone that advantage would make banker profitable for the player, so casinos take a 5% commission on banker wins. The commission is what turns a winning bet into a 1.06% losing one — and even after it, banker remains the cheapest standing bet on the floor.
How often each side wins
| Outcome | Frequency | |
|---|---|---|
| Banker | 45.86% | |
| Player | 44.62% | |
| Tie, paying 8:1 | 9.52% |
Banker and player are separated by barely more than a percentage point. That thin margin is the whole reason the commission exists — and the reason banker is still the cheaper bet after paying it.
Every bet, priced
| Bet | House edge |
|---|---|
| Banker After the 5% commission | 1.06% |
| Player | 1.24% |
| Tie, paying 9:1 Offered at some tables instead of 8:1 | 4.84% |
| Player or banker pair Eight decks, paying 11:1 | 10.36% |
| Tie, paying 8:1 | 14.36% |
The tie bet and the scorecards
The tie pays 8:1 on an outcome that occurs about 9.5% of the time, which works out to a house edge of 14.36%. Some tables pay 9:1 and bring it down to 4.84% — still several times worse than banker or player.
Baccarat tables commonly supply scorecards for recording results, and players track patterns on them with names like the big road and the bead plate. The drawing rules do not consult history and neither do the probabilities. A record of past hands carries exactly as much predictive value as a record of past coin flips: none.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I always bet banker?
- Banker is the cheapest of the three bets at 1.06% against player at 1.24%, so betting it consistently costs slightly less than betting player. Neither is profitable, and the difference over a session is small — but if the question is which bet to make, the answer is banker every time.
- Does the 5% commission make banker worse than player?
- No. The commission is already included in the 1.06% figure. Banker wins often enough that even after paying 5% on every win it remains cheaper than player at 1.24%. Without the commission it would be a bet the casino could not afford to offer.
- Do baccarat patterns and roads predict anything?
- No. Each hand is dealt from a shoe under fixed drawing rules, and previous results do not change the composition of what remains in any way a scorecard could capture. Roads record what happened; they contain no information about what happens next.
- Why is the tie bet so bad?
- It pays 8:1 on an outcome occurring roughly 9.5% of the time, which is a house edge of 14.36%. The payout would need to be about 9.5:1 simply to break even, and no table offers that.