An eight-deck baccarat game deals a banker win 45.86% of the time, a player win 44.62% of the time, and a tie 9.52% of the time. Those three probabilities price everything on the felt: a 1.06% house edge on banker after the 5% commission, 1.24% on player, and 14.36% on the tie at 8:1. If you need the rules and the third-card table first, start with how to play baccarat. What follows is where those numbers come from and what moves them.
Baccarat odds and house edge for every main bet
House edge is the share of each bet the casino keeps on average across many hands. The figures below are per unit staked in a standard eight-deck game.
| Bet | Wins | Payout | House edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banker | 45.86% | 1:1 minus 5% commission | 1.06% |
| Player | 44.62% | 1:1 | 1.24% |
| Tie | 9.52% | 8:1 | 14.36% |
| Player pair / banker pair | 7.47% | 11:1 | 10.36% |
Win probabilities are the standard eight-deck results, produced by counting every possible deal under the fixed drawing rules. The house-edge column is our own derivation from those probabilities and the payouts shown; a table with different payouts produces different figures.
Three notes before you use that table:
- Ties push the banker and player bets. Your stake comes back, so a tie costs and wins nothing on those two bets.
- Six-deck shoes are common online and shift the win probabilities by a fraction of a percentage point. The order never changes: banker first, player second.
- The commission is charged only on winning banker bets, and most online tables deduct it automatically.
How the 1.06% on the banker bet is calculated
Work through one unit staked on banker:
1. A win pays 1:1 less the 5% commission, returning 0.95 units. That is 0.4586 × 0.95 = 0.4357 units gained. 2. A loss costs the full unit: 0.4462 × 1 = 0.4462 units lost. 3. A tie returns the stake and contributes nothing either way. 4. Net result: 0.4357 − 0.4462 = −0.0106 units per unit staked. That is the 1.06%.
Player is simpler because no commission applies: 0.4462 − 0.4586 = −0.0124, or 1.24%.
You will sometimes see 1.17% and 1.37% quoted instead. Same arithmetic, different denominator — those versions count only hands that resolve and drop ties out entirely. In money, 1.06% is about $1.06 lost per $100 staked, averaged over a lot of hands rather than felt in any single one.
Is baccarat a 50/50 game?
No, and not only because of the tie. Strip ties out and banker wins 50.68% of decided hands against player's 49.32%.
That gap is also the reason the commission exists. Paid at a flat 1:1 with no deduction, the banker bet would return 0.4586 − 0.4462 = +1.24% to the bettor, which no casino would offer. The 5% charge on winning banker bets turns a bettor-positive bet into a 1.06% house bet.
Skill barely enters. You choose which box to back, and after that the drawing rules are fixed for both hands — no hitting, no standing, no decisions of any kind. The edge is set before the cards come out. For why the drawing rules favour banker in the first place, see banker vs player vs tie, derived.
Why the tie costs more than thirteen times what banker does
A tie lands roughly once every ten and a half hands, so a break-even payout would sit near 9.5:1. Tables pay 8:1.
Run the numbers on one unit: 8 × 0.0952 = 0.7612 units won against 0.9048 units lost, for −0.1436 per unit — a 14.36% edge, more than thirteen times the banker bet's cost.
The payout is the entire story. Some tables and online variants pay the tie 9:1, and the same bet on the same probabilities works out at roughly 4.8%. Better, still the most expensive main bet on the layout.
Pair bets follow the same logic. With eight decks there are 416 cards and 32 of each rank, so after the first card, 31 of the remaining 415 cards make the pair — 7.47%. At 11:1 that comes to −0.1036 per unit, or 10.36%. Live tables add further side bets whose paytables differ by provider, so read the numbers on the table you are actually at; live baccarat formats and table selection covers what varies.
One rule to watch: if a table advertises no commission on banker, the 1.06% above no longer applies. Find the rule that replaces the commission before you bet.
Does a betting system change baccarat odds?
No. Sequences like 1-3-2-6, Martingale, Paroli and Fibonacci all raise or cut the next stake based on the last result. Every hand is priced identically regardless of what came before it, so a staking sequence changes the shape of a session — bigger swings, longer runs of small wins — without changing the expected cost of a unit wagered.
Card removal does move the numbers slightly as a shoe depletes, and there is serious published work on counting the side bets. On banker and player the movement is far too small to flip either bet positive in normal play.
What does reduce your cost is unglamorous: back banker, skip the tie and the pairs, and play fewer hands per hour. The edge is charged on total money staked, not on time in the seat. Baccarat streaks, patterns and a sane bankroll goes further on sizing.
The honest read
Baccarat's 1.06% is one of the lowest house edges available, and almost all of that value disappears the moment you touch a side bet. The two decisions that matter are which box you back and how many hands you play — everything else on the layout is priced against you by a wide margin. The tie is not a long shot with a fair price attached; it is a short shot with an unfair one.
Treat the percentages as a cost of entertainment rather than a plan. A 1.06% edge over 200 hands at $10 a hand still expects to take about $21, and the variance around that number is far larger than the number itself.
Full rules, card values and the third-card table are in our baccarat guide.