How to play baccarat: the rules, the three bets, and the only strategy the maths supports

The rules: two hands, three bets, closest to nine

Two hands are dealt, called player and banker; the names are labels, not people. Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0): "Baccarat is a comparing card game played between two hands, the "player" and the "banker". Each baccarat coup (round of play) has three possible outcomes: "player" (player has the higher score), "banker", and "tie"." You bet on one of the three before any card is dealt; after that nothing is up to you.

Cards count by their last digit: tens and face cards are worth zero, aces one, and the others their face value, and a hand's total is the last digit of the sum, so 7 + 8 = 15 counts as 5. The hand closest to nine wins; equal totals are a tie. Wizard of Odds: "If either the Player or Banker have 8 or 9 points, it is referred to as a "natural." If there is at least one natural, then both hands will stand."

• Player: pays 1 to 1.
• Banker: pays 19 to 20 (1 to 1 less a 5% commission on the win) at standard tables.
• Tie: pays 8 to 1 at most tables; player and banker bets push on a tie.

The third-card rules: fixed, and the dealer applies them

When neither hand is a natural, the draw follows a table. Wikipedia: "If the player has an initial total of 5 or less, they draw a third card. If the player has an initial total of 6 or 7, they stand." Then the banker: "If the player stood pat (i.e. has only two cards), the banker regards only their own hand and acts according to the same rule as the player, i.e. the banker draws a third card with a total of 5 or less and stands with a total of 6 or 7." If the player drew, the banker's draw depends on the banker's total and on the player's third card, as listed below.

You never choose whether to draw. That is why Wikipedia calls punto banco "a pure game of chance" in which "it is not possible for a gambler's bets to be rationally motivated": the only choice is which of the three bets to make, and how much.

• Banker total 2 or less: draws regardless of the player's third card.
• Banker total 3: draws unless the player's third card is an 8.
• Banker total 4: draws if the player's third card is 2 to 7.
• Banker total 5: draws if the player's third card is 4 to 7.
• Banker total 6: draws if the player's third card is 6 or 7.
• Banker total 7: stands.

The house edge: banker 1.06%, player 1.24%, tie 14.36%

Wizard of Odds, for an eight-deck game: "the house edge is 1.06% on the banker bet, 1.24% on the player bet, and 14.36% on the tie." Wikipedia agrees to the rounding: "The player bet has, relative to most casino bets, a low house edge of 1.24%, and the banker bet (accounting for the 5% commission on the win) is even lower, at 1.06%. In contrast, the tie bet, which pays 8-to-1, has a high house edge of 14.4%."

The banker bet costs less because the banker hand draws last with more information; Wizard of Odds: "The reason the Banker gets paid less than the Player is the Banker enjoys a positional advantage, with more information available to make the decision on drawing a third card." The commission is how the house keeps an edge on a hand that wins more often than it loses. Tables that pay banker wins at even money except on a winning six ("Super 6") raise the banker edge to 1.46% per Wikipedia; read the payout rule of the table you open.

Baccarat strategy: the one that exists and the ones that do not

The only strategy the maths supports is the choice of bet: banker (1.06%) costs less than player (1.24%), and both cost far less than tie (14.36%). Beyond that, nothing you do after placing the bet affects the hand, and nothing you do between hands affects the next one.

Scorecards and "roads" that track past results are common at baccarat tables and in apps; Wikipedia describes them as displays of previous results. They show what happened, not what will happen: each coup is dealt from the same rules, and on Stake's own Baccarat every card is drawn with the same probability every time. Betting progressions such as the Martingale (double after a loss) change how wins and losses are arranged, not their average; an independent reference (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0) states that "Regardless of the specific progression, no such strategy can statistically overcome the casino's advantage, since the expected value of each allowed bet is negative."

Wikipedia notes that card counting can reduce the house edge in a shoe game by about 0.05%, and that edge sorting can do more; the first is too small to matter for a reader and the second depends on defective cards at a physical table. Neither applies to a game drawn from an unlimited number of decks.

• Do: bet banker or player, set a unit and a stopping rule, and treat the tie as the expensive bet it is.
• Do not: read patterns from the road, raise bets after losses, or expect any sequence of bets to change the expected value.

What Stake documents about its own Baccarat

Stake's Originals catalogue carried a "baccarat" tile on 2026-09-03, and the game page, in the Chinese edition the session displayed, showed three bet areas labelled 闲家, 和局 and 庄家 (player, tie and banker), chip values, a total-bet readout and undo and clear buttons. Stake's provably-fair game-events page states that for Blackjack, Hilo and Baccarat "we utilise an unlimited amount of decks when generating the game event, and therefore each turn of a card always has the same probability", and that for Baccarat "we only ever need 6 game events generated to cover the most amount of playable cards possible", meaning two hands of up to three cards each.

Two consequences follow. First, the eight-deck house-edge figures above are for a shoe game; the cited references publish no figure for an unlimited-deck game, so this site claims no house edge for Stake's Baccarat and treats the standard figures as a proxy only. Second, there is no shoe to deplete, so card counting has no basis on Stake's own game. Whether Stake's table pays the banker at 19 to 20 and the tie at 8 to 1 is confirmed by the game's own rules panel, not by this page.

If you open a baccarat table on Stake that is not the Originals game, its shoe and rules are its own and the game-events page does not cover it. This site has not played a hand on any Stake baccarat table.

Units, limits and a stopping rule

Decide the unit, the number of units you are prepared to lose and the point at which you stop, before the first hand. Bet banker or player, not tie. Do not raise the unit to chase a loss. The responsible gambling page on this site lists tools and resources.

This site offers no system and does not claim that any bet is a way to make money.

Where it is played, and what to confirm first

This page uses Stake's own Baccarat as its example and does not list or compare other operators. Before opening an account, read the regional restrictions and the age rules in the terms: Stake's terms name 44 restricted jurisdictions, recorded in this site's source register on 2026-09-03. This site gives no legal conclusion for any place and does not accept any way of working around a restriction.