How to play baccarat: the rules

The three bets

Player and Banker are only the names of the two hands. You don’t play either one, and Banker doesn’t mean the casino: you just pick the hand you think will win.

Exact figures for a fresh 8-deck shoe, counted over every possible hand. On a tie, the banker and player bets come back. In the no-commission game, a banker win with a three-card 7 comes up 2.25% of the time. Where a tie pays 9 to 1, that bet costs 4.84%. With 6 decks, banker costs 1.06%, player 1.24% and tie 14.44%.

What each card is worth

Suits don’t matter. A hand’s total is the last digit of its cards added up: 7 + 8 = 15, so that hand is worth 5. A hand can never bust, and 9 is the highest total.

How a round goes

1. Bet on Player, Banker or Tie before the cards come out. You can bet on more than one.
2. The dealer gives each hand two cards, starting with Player.
3. If either hand totals 8 or 9, that’s a natural. Both hands stand and the round is over.
4. If not, the player hand draws a third card or stands, by the rule below.
5. The banker hand then draws or stands, by its own rule below.
6. The higher total wins. Equal totals are a tie: the tie bet wins, and the player and banker bets come back.

From step 2 on, you don’t choose anything. The dealer applies the same rules to every hand, so you can’t play a hand well or badly. Your only decision is the bet.

The third-card rules

A natural comes first: with 8 or 9 on either hand’s first two cards, nobody draws. Otherwise, the player hand goes first.

If the player hand stood, the banker hand follows the same rule: it draws on 0 to 5 and stands on 6 or 7. If the player hand drew, the banker’s move depends on its own total and on the player’s third card.

Here’s the same rule as a full chart, with a row for each banker total and a column for each value of the player’s third card.

D = the banker draws, S = the banker stands. In the columns, 0 is a 10, J, Q or K, and 1 is an ace. A banker total of 8 or 9 is a natural, so it never gets this far.

An example: the player hand has 2 + 3 = 5, so it draws. A 7 comes, and its total is now 2. The banker hand has K + 6 = 6, and 6 draws against a 7. A 2 comes, for a total of 8. Banker wins 8 to 2.

What to bet and what to avoid

• Bet on banker. It costs 1.06% of what you bet on average, the lowest of the three even after the commission. It wins 45.86% of hands against 44.62% for player, because it acts last and its draws depend on the player’s third card.
• Player is close behind at 1.24%, with no commission to pay.
• Avoid the tie. Paying 8 to 1 sounds generous, but a tie comes up only 9.52% of the time. That bet costs 14.36%, more than 13 times as much as banker.
• Ignore the roads and streaks. The scoreboard only records what already happened. After any run of banker or player wins, the next hand comes out banker just as often as after any other hand.
• Don’t count on a betting system. It changes how your results are spread, but the house edge stays the same.

Words you’ll hear

• Natural: 8 or 9 on a hand’s first two cards. Neither hand draws.
• Shoe: the box that holds the decks, usually 6 or 8.
• Commission: the 5% the house keeps from a winning banker bet. It’s why banker pays 19 to 20.
• Punto banco: the full name of this version, the one with fixed rules for every card. Punto is the player and banco is the banker.
• Mini baccarat: the same rules at a smaller table, where the dealer handles all the cards and hands go faster.
• Bead plate and big road: the two scoreboards at the table. The bead plate marks every hand in order, and the big road starts a new column each time the winner changes.

Where to go next

The quickest way to learn the third-card rules is to watch them happen. Our game uses virtual chips, and its trainer explains each draw as it comes.

Exact baccarat odds · Baccarat questions · Test a betting system on baccarat · How baccarat compares with other games