Live Baccarat: Banker, Player or Tie?
The three baccarat bets compared by house edge: banker about 1.06%, player about 1.24%, tie about 14.4%.
· 5 min read
A game of fixed rules
In baccarat you bet on which hand will finish closer to nine, the banker's or the player's, or on a tie. You make no decisions about drawing cards: fixed rules decide whether each hand takes a third card. All you choose is the bet and its size.
The three bets and their edge
The banker bet wins slightly more often than the player bet, so winning banker bets usually pay 1 to 1 minus a commission, commonly 5 percent. Some tables use a no-commission variant with a different payout on one outcome, which changes the edge.
- Banker: about 1.06 percent house edge in the common eight-deck game, after the casino's commission.
- Player: about 1.24 percent.
- Tie: about 14.4 percent, and the usual 8 to 1 payout is why it looks tempting.
Patterns and scoreboards
Live baccarat screens often show road maps of past results. They are a record of what happened, and each new round is independent. No pattern on the screen changes the odds of the next hand.
Pace and cost
Baccarat rounds are quick. With assumed figures of 10 units a hand and 70 hands an hour for two hours, 1,400 units are wagered, so the expected cost is around 15 units on the banker bet and about 174 on tie bets. The calculator lets you try your own pace.
Short version
Banker and player are among the cheapest bets in the casino; tie is among the costliest. Compare formats on our live baccarat page.