This is classic Punto Banco, the baccarat you find in most casinos: an eight-deck shoe, three betting spots, and a 5% commission taken from winning Banker bets. You never make a decision once the cards are out. Your only choice is where to put your chips, and the dealer draws by a fixed table. That simplicity is why the game is worth understanding properly: the commission is the whole story of which bet is best.
How to play
Placing a bet. Pick a chip value (20, 100 or 500) and tap Player, Banker or Tie to stack it there. You can cover more than one spot in the same round. Each spot takes up to 1,000 credits, and bets go in steps of 20 so that the 0.95-to-1 Banker payout always comes out in whole credits. Clear removes the chips you have placed, Rebet repeats your previous round, and Deal starts the hand.
Card values. Aces count 1, two through nine count their face value, and tens, jacks, queens and kings count 0. A hand’s total is the last digit of the sum, so 7 + 8 = 15 is a 5, and a king with a nine is a 9. Totals run from 0 to 9, and the side closer to 9 wins.
The deal. Cards come out alternately: Player, Banker, Player, Banker. If either side has 8 or 9 on its first two cards, that is a natural and nobody draws.
Otherwise the Player hand goes first. On 0 to 5 it takes a third card; on 6 or 7 it stands. The Banker then follows this table:
| Banker total | Banker draws when the Player’s third card is |
|---|---|
| 0, 1, 2 | anything (always draws) |
| 3 | anything except 8 |
| 4 | 2 to 7 |
| 5 | 4 to 7 |
| 6 | 6 or 7 |
| 7 | never draws |
If the Player stood on 6 or 7, the Banker simply draws on 0 to 5 and stands on 6 or 7. The game applies all of this for you, so you never need to memorise it; it is here so you can follow why a hand went the way it did.
Payouts and the odds
| Bet | Pays | Probability of winning | House edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player | 1 to 1 | 44.62% | 1.24% |
| Banker | 0.95 to 1 (5% commission) | 45.86% | 1.06% |
| Tie | 8 to 1 | 9.52% | 14.36% |
When the hand ties, Player and Banker bets are handed back. The edges above are exact for an eight-deck shoe and are checked by the game’s own test suite against the drawing rules.
Why does Banker win more often? Because the Banker acts second and its drawing rules react to the Player’s third card. That small information edge pushes Banker’s win rate about 1.2 points above Player’s. Without a commission, a Banker bet would favour you, so the house keeps 5% of every Banker win. Even after paying it, Banker is still the cheapest bet on the table. Tie pays 8 to 1, but a fair price would be close to 9.5 to 1, which is why the edge on Tie is more than ten times larger.
If you want a table that skips the commission and changes the Banker payout in another way, look at No Commission Baccarat.
Strategy
There is no playing strategy, because there are no playing decisions. What you can control is the bet, and the numbers are clear:
- Banker is the best bet, by about a fifth of a percent over Player.
- Player is a close second and pays a clean even money.
- Tie is the worst bet in the game. At 14.36%, it costs you roughly fourteen credits for every hundred wagered over the long run.
The strip of P, B and T beads above the table shows the last thirty results. It is fun to watch, but it predicts nothing. Each round is drawn from a shuffled shoe, a streak of five Banker wins does not make Player “due”, and the shoe is reshuffled automatically when fewer than 16 cards remain.
Bet sizing does not change the house edge either. Doubling up after losses only moves you toward the 1,000 table limit faster. If you want your credits to last, keep the bet a small, steady fraction of your balance.
If you enjoy Baccarat, try Baccarat Banque or Baccarat Squeeze next.
