How to play baccarat: rules, drawing tables and payouts explained

Baccarat (punto banco) is a comparison game between two hands, player and banker. You bet on which will finish closer to a total of nine, or on a tie. After the bet is placed, nobody makes a decision: the dealer draws according to tables printed on the felt. This guide gives you those tables exactly as casinos apply them, plus the payouts, the maths behind every bet and the etiquette of a live table. It is part of our baccarat academy.

Card values in baccarat

Suits are irrelevant. Add the cards and keep only the last digit: 9 + 7 = 16 counts as 6; King + 5 = 5; 4 + 6 = 10 counts as 0 (called baccarat, the worst hand). Because of this, a hand can never bust — it just wraps around. The highest possible total is 9.

Naturals

If either hand totals 8 or 9 with its first two cards, that is a natural and no more cards are dealt to either side. A natural 9 beats a natural 8; two equal naturals are a tie.

How a round of baccarat works, step by step

1. 1

   Place your bet

   Put chips on Player, Banker or Tie (and any side bets offered). At live tables you must bet before the dealer announces "no more bets"; online you click the betting area and confirm.

2. 2

   Two cards each

   The dealer deals two cards to the player hand and two to the banker hand, player first, alternating. In "squeeze" games the cards may be revealed slowly; the order of reveal never changes the result.

3. 3

   Check for naturals

   If either hand shows 8 or 9, the round ends immediately and the higher hand wins (or it is a tie).

4. 4

   Apply the player's third-card rule

   Player draws on 0–5 and stands on 6–7. This decision is made first and depends only on the player's own total.

5. 5

   Apply the banker's third-card rule

   If the player stood, banker draws on 0–5 and stands on 6–7. If the player drew, banker's action depends on its own total and the value of the player's third card (table below).

6. 6

   Compare and settle

   The hand closer to 9 wins. Player bets pay 1:1, banker bets pay 1:1 minus 5% commission, tie pays 8:1 (sometimes 9:1). If the hands tie, player and banker bets push — they are returned.

The third-card rules (drawing tables)

These tables are identical in every punto banco game worldwide — Macau, Las Vegas, London, and every licensed online casino. You do not need to memorise them to play, because the dealer or software applies them automatically, but understanding them explains why banker wins more often.

Player hand rule

Banker hand rule when the player stood

If the player did not take a third card (player total 6 or 7), the banker follows the same simple rule as the player: draw on 0–5, stand on 6–7.

Banker hand rule when the player drew a third card

In words: banker on 0–2 always draws; on 3 draws unless the player's third card was an 8; on 4 draws if the player's third card was 2–7; on 5 draws if it was 4–7; on 6 draws only if it was 6 or 7; on 7 always stands. A banker 8 or 9 is a natural and never draws.

Baccarat bets, probabilities and payouts

The figures below are exact for a standard eight-deck shoe. Ties occur in 9.52% of hands; in the remaining 90.48% the banker wins slightly more often than the player.

How the banker edge is calculated: expected value per £1 = 0.4586 × £0.95 − 0.4462 × £1 = £0.4357 − £0.4462 = −£0.0106, i.e. a loss of 1.06p per pound. For player: 0.4462 − 0.4586 = −0.0124, or 1.24%. For tie at 8:1: 0.0952 × 8 − 0.9048 = −0.1436, or 14.36%. Ties push the player and banker bets, which is why those edges are quoted per bet placed rather than per bet resolved (per resolved hand they are 1.17% and 1.36%).

Six decks and a single deck

Deck count barely matters for the main bets. With six decks the banker edge stays at 1.06% and player at 1.24%; the tie edge rises slightly to 14.44%. With a single deck banker improves to 1.01%, player worsens to 1.29% and tie jumps to 15.75%. The pair side bets are far more sensitive to deck count than the main bets.

No-commission baccarat explained

Many online lobbies and Asian casinos promote "no-commission" or "super six" baccarat: banker pays a full 1:1 with no 5% deduction. The catch is printed in small type — a banker win with a total of 6 pays only half (1:2) instead of even money. That single exception is worth more to the casino than the commission it replaced: the banker edge rises from 1.06% to about 1.46%. Player and tie are unaffected.

A second family, EZ Baccarat, removes commission and instead makes a banker win with a three-card total of 7 a push. That version carries a banker edge of about 1.02%, marginally better than standard — but it is usually paired with the Dragon 7 (7.61% edge) and Panda 8 (10.19%) side bets, which is where the operator earns its margin. Rule of thumb: if the banker bet looks cheaper than standard, read the footnote.

The squeeze

In high-limit rooms and many live-dealer studios the cards are revealed slowly: the player with the largest bet (or the dealer on camera) bends the corner of each card to peek at the pips before turning it over. This is the squeeze. It is pure theatre — the cards were fixed the moment they left the shoe — but it is the part of the game many players enjoy most, and it slows the table down to perhaps 30–40 hands an hour instead of 60–80. A slower table means fewer hands, which at a fixed edge means a smaller expected loss per hour, so the squeeze is harmless to your wallet. Online "speed baccarat" tables do the opposite, resolving a hand every 27 seconds or so.

Scorecards and roads: what they show and what they don't

Every baccarat screen shows a grid of red and blue circles: the bead plate (every result in order), the big road (columns of consecutive player or banker wins, with ties marked as a green line), and three derived charts — the big eye boy, small road and cockroach road — that track whether the big road is "repeating" or "choppy". Players use them to bet on streaks continuing ("follow the dragon") or breaking.

None of this has predictive value. Each hand is dealt from the same shoe with the cards that happen to remain, and the composition changes so little from hand to hand that the banker probability stays within a few hundredths of a percentage point of 45.86% for the whole shoe. A streak of eight banker wins is exactly as likely to be followed by a banker win as any other hand. The roads are a record, not a forecast. Our baccarat strategies guide shows what happens to a pattern-betting bankroll over 10,000 hands.

Etiquette and practical tips at a live table

• Commission on banker wins is usually tracked in a box in front of the dealer and collected when you leave or when the shoe ends; keep enough chips to settle it.
• Minimums at live-dealer tables online often start around £1–£5; land-based tables commonly start at £10–£25 and high-limit rooms at £100+.
• If you win on banker with "no commission" rules, check the payout each time a banker 6 lands — it is the most common point of confusion.
• Do not touch the cards unless you are the designated squeezer in a squeeze game.
• Decide on your bet before the previous hand is settled so you are not rushed by the "no more bets" call.

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