Baccarat Variants: Types of Baccarat, Their Rules and What Each Costs

Standard punto banco

Most tables you meet are standard punto banco: you bet on which hand finishes closer to nine, and a printed rule does the rest.

Picture cards and tens count as zero. Eight decks sit in the shoe, and the dealer turns the first card to decide how many cards to burn face down into the discard tray; tens and picture cards count as ten for this. After that, two cards go to Player and two to Banker.

The drawing rules are rigid. Player draws on five or less. If Player stands, Banker draws on five or less. If Player draws, Banker follows a grid set by its own total and the card Player received. You do not need to memorise it; the dealer applies it, and our rules page prints the full chart.

A typical hand runs like this. Player is dealt a king and a four, four, and draws a three: seven. Banker holds a two and a three, five, and against a Player third card of three, Banker on five stands. Player wins, seven to five. Nobody decided anything after the chips went down.

The Tie is the bet to leave alone. At 8 to 1 it costs 14.36 per cent; a table paying 9 to 1 brings that down to 4.84 per cent, still more than four times the Banker price. Stick to Banker and your money lasts longer here than almost anywhere else on the floor.

No-commission baccarat

No-commission tables drop the 5 per cent taken from Banker wins and take their margin back from one total instead.

A winning Banker bet pays slightly less than the stake. You put £20 on Banker, it wins, and you are paid £19. The 5 per cent comes off every Banker win, and that is what holds the edge at 1.06 per cent.

At a no-commission table, Banker wins pay even money, except a Banker win with six, which pays 1 to 2: half your stake as profit. It is tidier to play, with no fractions and no small change. The price is higher, though. The Banker edge moves from 1.06 to 1.46 per cent, £1.46 per £100 staked. You swap a small, steady charge for one sharp cut.

Put that in pounds. A hundred hands of £10 on Banker is £1,000 staked. At a standard table the expected cost is about £10.60; at a no-commission table it is about £14.60. Four pounds over an evening is not a fortune, but it buys you nothing except the absence of a commission line on the screen.

Super 6 and other Banker-six rules

Super 6 is the name many tables give to the Banker-six rule, often with a separate side bet on Banker winning with six.

The main bets work exactly as at a no-commission table, so Banker costs 1.46 per cent here too. The side bet that often comes with the name is a separate wager with its own paytable; read it in the table's help screen before you put a chip on it.

People pick these tables because they dislike the commission and the decimals it leaves in the balance. That is a premium paid for convenience. Where a Banker six is paid at half, a standard table elsewhere is the cheaper seat. There is no reason to take a worse price to avoid odd pennies.

Squeeze baccarat

Squeeze baccarat is theatre: the cards are revealed slowly in close-up, and the order in the shoe was fixed before anyone touched them.

At a squeeze table the dealer may bend the corner of a card for half a minute before turning it. The result is the same one a fast deal would have given. Bending the cardboard does not turn a two into a nine, and the edges stay at 1.06 per cent on Banker and 1.24 per cent on Player.

It does have one practical point in its favour. Slower reveals mean fewer hands an hour, so less money passes across the table in a session. If you enjoy the ritual, it is a cheap way to make an evening last. If the pageantry tries your patience, a standard table costs the same per hand.

Mini and speed tables

Mini baccarat and speed baccarat keep the standard rules and edges; what they change is the table and the clock.

A mini table has one dealer handling every card, usually with lower stakes. A speed table deals the cards face up and cuts the pauses, so more hands go by in an hour. The edge per hand is unchanged, but the cost per hour rises with the number of hands. The mini and speed page works that hourly figure out.

Lightning tables

Lightning Baccarat adds random multipliers to a standard deal and charges a 20 per cent fee on your total bet to pay for them.

In each round, Evolution's game generates between one and five Lightning Cards, each with a multiplier. If one of them is in the winning hand you backed, the payout is multiplied. The fee is paid on every hand, multiplier or not, so the base game is no longer the cheap refuge it is at a standard table. The Lightning Baccarat page goes through the fee and the multipliers in full.

The fee is easy to price. Put £10 on Banker and £12 leaves your balance. Fifty hands at £10 means £100 in fees before a single result, which is the figure to set beside the £1.06 per £100 that Banker costs at a standard table.

Side bets you will meet

Side bets are how a cheap table becomes an expensive one: small circles around the main boxes, offering big payouts for rare events.

The Player Pair, paying 11 to 1, costs 10.36 per cent, nearly ten times the Banker price. Dragon Bonus and similar extras carry their own paytables, and their edges sit far above the main bets. They are decoration you pay for.

One evening proves nothing either way. The maths does not move. The choice that changes your bill is where you put the chip.