Lucky Tree Baccarat hangs eight cards on a tree before every deal. Each tree card carries a modest ×2 or, now and then, ×3. With eight of them, one lands in a winning hand far more often than at other multiplier tables. And when two or three tree cards meet in the same hand, they multiply. Live casinos sell this style as Prosperity Tree Baccarat. Every rule and figure for our version is on this page.
How to play
Bets. Chips come in 20, 100 and 500, and every spot takes up to 1,000 credits in steps of 20. Every bet carries a 20% round fee: a 100 bet costs 120. The fee is what pays for the tree. It doesn’t come back, even on a push.
| Bet | Base pay | Tree cards that count | Most it can pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player | 1 to 1 | Player’s cards | 27 to 1 |
| Banker | 0.95 to 1 | Banker’s cards | 25.65 to 1 |
| Tie | 5 to 1 | all cards of both hands | 3,645 to 1 |
| Player Pair / Banker Pair | 10 to 1 | that hand’s first two cards (same rank) | 90 to 1 |
If the hands tie, Player and Banker bets come back (the fee doesn’t).
The tree. After bets close, eight cards are drawn from a 52-card deck, each a rank and a suit, such as the 7 of hearts. Every copy of that card in the eight-deck shoe counts for the round, but the 7 of spades doesn’t. Of every 17 tree cards, 16 are ×2 and 1 is ×3. The tree is shown above the hands, and its cards are ringed in red when dealt.
Multipliers multiply. The base win is multiplied by every tree card in the hand that counts. A winning Player hand holding two ×2 cards pays 1 to 1 × 4. The same tree card dealt twice counts twice.
The cards. Aces count 1, 2 to 9 count their pips, and tens and picture cards count 0. Only the last digit of a total matters. Two cards each go to Player and Banker. A total of 8 or 9 is a natural and nobody draws. Otherwise Player draws on 0 to 5, and Banker draws by the standard third-card table. The higher total wins.
How often the tree pays
Eight of 52 cards means any card in your hand is on the tree about 15% of the time. A two-card hand catches at least one tree card in more than a quarter of rounds. That’s the character of the game: small boosts, often. At Gold Card Baccarat only five cards carry a multiplier, but those multipliers run up to ×8.
What it costs
Return to the player per credit paid (bet plus fee), counted exactly over every possible deal from an eight-deck shoe and every tree draw:
| Bet | Return | House edge |
|---|---|---|
| Player | 98.83% | 1.17% |
| Banker | 97.87% | 2.13% |
| Tie | 92.60% | 7.40% |
| Player Pair / Banker Pair | 92.44% | 7.56% |
Strategy
Player is the cheapest bet. The tree multiplies the winnings, not the stake. Player’s wins pay a full 1 to 1, so every tree card adds a little more for Player than for Banker’s 0.95.
The pair bets are better than at a classic table. A plain pair bet at 11 to 1 gives up 10.4%. Here the base pay is lower, but a pair is two cards, and each can be on the tree: 7.6%.
The fee is paid every round, the tree pays only on wins. Over a short session, results swing more than the house edge suggests.
If you enjoy Lucky Tree Baccarat, try Macao or Macau Baccarat next.
