How to play
Banca Francesa comes from the casinos of Portugal, where it has been a fixture of the gaming floor for more than a hundred years. The layout here is about as small as a dice table gets: one row with three boxes. Pequeno 5-7 sits on the left, Aces 1-1-1 in the middle and Grande 14-16 on the right. Each box shows its price, so you never have to remember it.
A round goes like this:
- Choose a chip from the tray (10, 50, 100 or 500) and tap one or more boxes. Every tap adds that chip to the box.
- Press Roll. Three dice tumble across the felt and the total appears above the board.
- The total settles every chip on the table at once.
Totals of 5, 6 and 7 are small: Pequeno is paid even money and the other two boxes are lost. Totals of 14, 15 and 16 are big: Grande is paid even money and the others lose. Three ones, a total of 3, pays the Aces box 61 to 1 and takes both Pequeno and Grande. Everything else, which means 4, 8 through 13, 17 and 18, decides nothing. Your chips come back to your balance and the message line says “Your bet is returned.”
Chips don’t stay on the boxes after a roll. To repeat the same stake, press Rebet; to take back the last chip you placed, press Undo; Clear wipes the board. A single box takes up to 1,000 credits, and the whole board up to 5,000. The strip above the table keeps your last eight totals, newest first.
Why most rolls are a push
This is the part that surprises new players. With three dice there are 216 possible results, and only 63 of them settle anything:
| Total | Ways to roll it | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 3 (1-1-1) | 1 | Aces wins 61 to 1 |
| 5, 6, 7 | 6 + 10 + 15 = 31 | Pequeno wins 1 to 1 |
| 14, 15, 16 | 15 + 10 + 6 = 31 | Grande wins 1 to 1 |
| 4, 8-13, 17, 18 | 153 | Push, all chips returned |
So roughly 71% of rolls are pushes, and a decision arrives on average once every 3.4 rolls. A total of 4 looks small and 17 looks big, but both are dead numbers here; only the three totals at each edge of the middle count.
The house edge
Look at Grande on the 63 deciding rolls: it wins 31 and loses 32, because the 1-1-1 roll is counted against it. Pequeno is the mirror image. Aces wins once in 63 at 61 to 1, so it collects 61 units once and loses one unit 62 times. All three bets come out the same: the house keeps exactly 1/63 of every decided bet, about 1.59%.
Measured per roll instead of per decision, the pushes thin it out to 1/216, about 0.46% of what you put down each time you press Roll. The whole edge comes from one face combination. Without the triple-ones rule, Grande and Pequeno would be a perfectly fair coin.
Strategy
There is no choice in Banca Francesa that moves the edge. Every box costs the same 1/63 per decision, and pushes cost nothing. What you do control is how bumpy the ride is.
- Grande or Pequeno alone gives a near coin flip each time something happens. Your balance moves slowly.
- Aces is a long-shot ticket. You expect to wait about 216 rolls for one hit, and the 61-to-1 payout has to cover all the misses in between.
- Grande and Pequeno together is a trap that looks safe. One of them wins whenever the other loses, so the pair breaks even on every decision except 1-1-1, where both go. That makes the combined bet a slow, guaranteed leak with no upside.
- A small Aces chip next to an even-money bet softens the triple-ones loss. If you put 10 on Aces and 600 or so on Grande, the Aces payout roughly covers what the triple takes from Grande. The edge on each chip is still 1.59%, so this smooths swings rather than winning anything.
Dice have no memory. A long run of pushes or three Grandes in a row says nothing about the next roll, so the history strip is for curiosity, not prediction.
If you like three-dice games with more ways to bet, Sic Bo has a full board of totals, triples and combinations, and Chuck-a-Luck pays on how many dice show your number.
If you enjoy Banca Francesa, try Banker Bonus Baccarat or Banker Seven Baccarat next.
