Baccarat Rules: How to Play Punto Banco, the Third-Card Rule and Odds

The names Player and Banker are labels for the two hands, not for people. You can bet on either, whoever you are, and the casino banks every bet. A round is called a coup, and most British casinos deal it from a shoe of six or eight standard decks.

Nobody at the table makes a decision once the bets are down. That is the most important thing to know about how to play baccarat: the dealer applies the third-card rules mechanically, so the game is entirely about which bet you choose and how much you stake.

Online versions follow the same baccarat rules. Every online game offered in Great Britain has to meet the Gambling Commission’s technical standards, which require the rules and the payouts to be shown to the player.^{2 (source)}

Dropping the tens digit means a hand can never bust. Two picture cards make 0, the weakest hand, and 9 + 9 makes 8. Players sometimes call a hand of 0 “baccarat”, which is where the game is often said to get its name.

Two-card totals of 8 or 9 are naturals. With eight decks, a single two-card hand is a natural about 18.9% of the time, and at least one of the two hands has a natural in about 34.3% of coups. We worked both figures out from the card counts: 128 zero-value cards and 32 of each other value per eight decks.

These punto banco rules are the same in every British casino, because the house banks the game and nobody has a choice to make.^{1 (source)} The table looks complicated, but it boils down to a few lines you can check against the grid.

• Banker 0, 1 or 2 always draws.
• Banker 3 draws unless the Player’s third card is an 8.
• Banker 4 draws if the Player’s third card is 2 to 7.
• Banker 5 draws if the Player’s third card is 4 to 7.
• Banker 6 draws if the Player’s third card is 6 or 7.
• Banker 7 always stands; 8 and 9 are naturals and the coup is already over.

A Player third card of 0 (a ten or a picture card) leaves the Player total unchanged, and against it the Banker draws on 3 or less and stands on 4 to 7. The logic is the same throughout: the Banker draws when the Player’s third card has probably left the Player with a total the Banker can beat by drawing.

You never need to apply these rules yourself. The dealer does, and the casino supervises it. Knowing them helps you follow the coup and spot the rare dealing error, which the inspector will correct.

We worked out the win chances by going through every possible deal from an eight-deck shoe, card by card, with the third-card rules above. The result matches the published figures to two decimals: 45.86% Banker, 44.62% Player, 9.52% Tie.^{1 (source)} The house edges follow directly. For Banker: 0.95 × 45.86% − 44.62% = −1.06% of each stake, with ties returned.

Six decks make almost no difference: the Banker and Player odds stay at 1.06% and 1.24%, and the Tie edge moves slightly to 14.44%.^{1 (source)} The number of decks is far less important than which bet you place.

The Tie bet is the one to watch. It looks tempting at 8:1, but a tie comes up less than one coup in ten, and paying 8:1 on a 9.52% chance gives the casino more than 14p of every pound staked on it. A few games pay 9:1, which cuts the edge to 4.84%, still far dearer than Banker or Player.

The Player hand follows a simple rule: draw on 5 or less. The Banker hand draws or stands depending on what the Player has just drawn. When the Player’s third card is likely to have made a strong hand, the Banker draws more aggressively; when it is likely to have made a weak one, the Banker can stand on a modest total.

Of the coups that do not tie, Banker wins 50.68% and Player 49.32%. Paying the Banker bet at full even money would give players an edge of about 1.2%, so the 5% commission turns it back into a house game, just barely. It is still the cheapest bet in baccarat, and one of the cheapest in the casino.

Your stake comes back on top of the amounts shown. Some casinos take the commission straight from each win; others keep a running tally in a box marked with your seat number and collect it when you leave or when the shoe ends. Either way the cost is the same.

No-commission tables pay Banker at even money but pay only half on a Banker win with a total of 6. A winning Banker 6 happens in about 5.39% of coups, and halving that payout gives a Banker edge of 1.46%, slightly worse than the 1.06% at a commission table. We worked this out with the same enumeration as the odds table.

When British players say baccarat, they nearly always mean punto banco, and the punto banco rules on this page are the ones you will meet in a casino or an online lobby. Big-table versions with a squeeze, where the player with the largest bet turns the cards over slowly, use the same rules; the theatre does not change the odds.

Side bets such as Player Pair and Banker Pair appear at many tables. They pay large amounts on rare events and, like blackjack side bets, cost much more than the main bets; check the pay table on the layout before you use them.

Many casinos supply pencils and cards so players can record results, and screens at the table draw the history as “roads”. They are popular because baccarat gives players nothing else to decide. The odds in the table above apply to every coup, whatever happened before it.

Staking systems that raise the bet after a loss do not help either. They change how a session swings, not the house edge on each bet, and they can run into the table maximum after a short losing run. Eight losses in a row on Banker, doubling from £10, call for a £2,560 bet on the ninth hand.

Reading the total. A hand of 9 + 6 is 5, not 15, and a hand that looks big can be almost worthless. Only the last digit counts, so the dealer’s call of the totals is the quickest check.

Expecting a choice. Players who know blackjack often wait to be asked whether they want a card. In punto banco nobody is asked: the dealer follows the third-card table, and the next coup starts as soon as the bets are settled.

Forgetting the commission. A winning Banker bet pays 19 for 20, not 20. At tables that keep a running tally, the amount owed builds up quietly and is collected later, so count it as part of the cost of the bet.

Chasing the Tie. The 8:1 payout looks generous, but a tie comes up less than once in ten coups. At 14.36% the Tie costs more than ten times as much as Banker, and it is the bet the baccarat rules make most expensive.

Trusting the board. The history screen records what happened; it does not forecast anything. A beginner who bets the same side every coup at a stake they are comfortable with plays exactly the same odds as a regular with a pencil and a scorecard.

The speed of baccarat matters more than it seems. With little to decide, a dealer can run many coups an hour, and the house edge applies to each one. A small edge on a fast game can cost as much per hour as a bigger edge on a slow one; choosing your stake with that in mind is sensible.

Our casino etiquette guide covers buying in and handling chips, and the house edge guide sets baccarat beside blackjack, roulette and craps.

Prefer to play baccarat online? Our UK casino comparison lists the licensed UK sites. 18+