How to play
Monte Bank is an old Spanish banking game, and the version here keeps its best feature: you see most of the table before you bet. The deck has 40 cards, Ace to 7 plus Jack, Queen and King in each suit. There are no 8s, 9s or 10s, and card ranks never matter. Only suits do.
Each round goes like this:
- Four cards are already face up. The two on top form the Top layout and the two underneath form the Bottom layout. After a round, the old result stays on the table for a moment and the new layout waits in a small “Next layout” panel; it moves to the centre as soon as you place a chip.
- You place chips on one or more of six spots: Top, Bottom, or one of the four suit buttons (♣ ♦ ♥ ♠).
- Press Deal. The gate card is turned from the 36 cards that are left.
- A layout wins if the gate’s suit matches either of its two cards. A suit bet wins if the gate is that suit. The result line says which side won, for example “Gate hearts: the top wins”, or “no match, the bank wins”.
Chip values are 20, 100, 200 and 1,000. A single spot takes 20 to 1,000 credits in steps of 20, and the whole table is capped at 5,000. Undo removes your last chip, Clear removes them all and Rebet repeats the last round’s bets. A strip of past gates shows each suit with an arrow for the layout it paid.
How the odds are set
This is where Monte Bank differs from most card tables. The payouts aren’t fixed. Before every round the game counts how many cards of each suit are still in the 36-card stub, works out the exact chance of each bet, and prices it at 95% of a fair payout, rounded down to the nearest 0.05. The odds printed on each button are the ones you get. That rounding means a bet always returns somewhere between about 90% and 95%.
Here’s a real-looking example. Top shows 7♣ and K♥; Bottom shows 2♣ and Q♣.
| Bet | Cards left that win | Chance | Pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top (♣ or ♥) | 7 clubs + 9 hearts = 16 | 16 in 36 | 1.1 to 1 |
| Bottom (♣ only) | 7 clubs | 7 in 36 | 3.85 to 1 |
| ♣ | 7 | 7 in 36 | 3.85 to 1 |
| ♥ | 9 | 9 in 36 | 2.8 to 1 |
| ♦ or ♠ | 10 | 10 in 36 | 2.4 to 1 |
Three clubs on the table drain that suit, so Top is cheaper than usual and a club gate is a long shot.
Across all deals the ranges look like this:
- A layout with two different suits pays between 0.9 to 1 and 1.1 to 1, depending on how many of those suits are already showing.
- A layout whose two cards share one suit pays between 3.25 to 1 and 4.7 to 1.
- A suit bet pays 2.4 to 1 when none of that suit is showing, and up to 4.7 to 1 when all four layout cards are that suit.
Strategy
Because every price is pegged to the real chance, there’s no bet that’s secretly good. What the rounding does create is a small spread: some bets land right at 95% and some drop toward 90%. You can only see that by doing the arithmetic, and it’s rarely worth more than a percent or two.
Some things that do help:
- Read both layouts together. The cards in one layout reduce the stub for the other. In the example, the club on top is weak because two more clubs sit underneath.
- Use both layouts when they share a suit. If Top and Bottom both contain hearts, a heart gate pays both. That doesn’t raise your return, but it bunches your wins together.
- Covering everything costs you. Spread chips over all four suits and one is certain to win, yet each still carries its 5–10% bank margin, so you lose a little every round.
- Pick your swing size. Two-suit layouts win nearly half the time and pay around evens; single-suit layouts and suit bets win less often and pay three to five times the stake.
If you like seeing the odds move with the cards, Lansquenet and Faro are other old banking games built on card matching.
If you enjoy Monte Bank, try Multi-Ball Roulette or Multi-Card Keno next.
