Baccarat Odds & House Edge
Every figure below was computed by enumerating all 1,659,001 reachable coups of a fresh 8-deck shoe, each weighted by its exact probability. No simulation, no rounding up from someone else's table — and you can re-run it yourself.
How often each side wins
| Result | Probability |
|---|---|
| Banker wins | 45.859742% |
| Player wins | 44.624661% |
| Tie | 9.515597% |
Those three sum to 100% and match the canonical 8-deck figures to six decimal places, which is the check that the drawing tableau behind them is correct.
House edge on the main bets
| Bet | Pays | House edge |
|---|---|---|
| Banker | 0.95 : 1 (5% commission) | 1.06% |
| Player | 1 : 1 | 1.24% |
| Tie | 8 : 1 | 14.36% |
Each falls straight out of the probabilities above. Banker: 0.45859742 × 0.95 − 0.44624661 = −0.0106. Player: 0.44624661 − 0.45859742 = −0.0124. Tie: 0.09515597 × 8 − 0.90484403 = −0.1436.
Banker is the best bet on the table, commission included. The Tie costs roughly twelve times as much per unit staked.
Side bet house edges, exact
Ordered best to worst for the player. Every one lands within 0.0033 percentage points of published analysis.
| Side bet | Wins when | House edge |
|---|---|---|
| Dragon Bonus (Player) | Player wins by 4+, or on a natural | 2.65% |
| Dragon 7 | Banker wins with a three-card 7 | 7.61% |
| Dragon Bonus (Banker) | Banker wins by 4+, or on a natural | 9.37% |
| Panda 8 | Player wins with a three-card 8 | 10.19% |
| Player / Banker Pair | That hand's first two cards match | 10.36% |
| Tiger Tie | Tie on 6 (at 45:1) | 11.50% |
| Small Tiger | Banker wins with a two-card 6 | 14.33% |
| Big Tiger | Banker wins with a three-card 6 | 15.25% |
| Tiger Pair | A pair in either hand | 16.12% |
| Tiger | Banker wins with 6 (12:1 / 20:1) | 16.68% |
Two things worth noticing. The Player Dragon Bonus at 2.65% is the only side bet that is anywhere near the main bets — everything else is several times worse than simply betting Banker. And the Banker side of the same bet costs 9.37%, because the Banker hand reaches big winning margins far less often.
Paytables vary — check the felt
The same bet name can carry different odds from one casino to the next, and the difference is not small:
| Bet | Paytable | House edge |
|---|---|---|
| Tiger Tie | 35 : 1 (original) | 30.74% |
| Tiger Tie | 45 : 1 (current) | 11.50% |
| Banker wins with 6 | 12:1 / 20:1 (“Tiger”) | 16.68% |
| Banker wins with 6 | 12:1 / 23:1 (“Lucky 6”) | 11.70% |
| Either Pair | 5 : 1 | 13.71% |
| Lucky 7 (Player wins with 7) | 6:1 / 15:1 | 18.30% |
A Tiger Tie at 35:1 and one at 45:1 are the same wager with nearly triple the cost. Two circles printed with the same words are not the same bet.
Check the numbers yourself
The engine is open source, and the enumeration is a test you can run in about three seconds:
cargo test -p baccarat-engine --test exact_enumeration -- --nocaptureIt walks every reachable coup, asserts the leaf probabilities sum to 1, and prints the table above.