Baccarat Probabilities and the Best Bet

It is easy to understand the baccarat probabilities and the best bet, which is considered to be the banker bet by most experts.

Baccarat Probabilities and the House Edge

It is important in any casino game to know what your chances of winning are.  With all the information available today, especially on the internet, players can check the baccarat probabilities quite easily.  It is very useful to know which bets to place in order to have the greatest chance of winning, and which bets to place which will have the highest payoff, but possibly not the greatest chance of winning.

In baccarat, there are three possible bets.  Players can bet on the player hand, the banker hand and the possibility of a tie hand.  When betting on the player hand, the house edge is around 1.35%.  When betting on the banker hand, the house edge is around 1.17%.  From this, it certainly seems obvious that the bet on the banker hand is the best bet.  However, there is one more thing to bear in mind when making a bet on the banker hand, and that is the house commission which the house receives when a banker hand bet wins.  The house commission in baccarat is usually 5%.  There is no house commission on the other two baccarat bets.

Baccarat Probabilities and the Best Bet

While the house commission may mean that when winning a bet on the banker hand, the player will receive slightly less money than when winning on the player hand, even though both are even 1:1 odds, the player should note that the probablity of winning a bet placed on the banker hand is greater.   In other words, even though slightly less is won per banker hand bet, there is more chance of winning this bet more often.  The bet on the banker hand according to baccarat probabilities is certainly the best bet.

The Tie Bet

The tie bet is a bet placed on the outcome that both the banker hand and the player hand will have hands of the same value.  The likelihood of a tie bet winning is far from good.  The house edge on the tie bet is around 14%.  The payout odds on a tie bet are 8:1.  High odds such as this are not offered at a casino if a bet is likely to win.  While a win at these odds would certainly give the player a nice tidy sum of money for a single bet, it is much less likely to win, and therefore most people would not place this wager.

What Else Could Affect the Baccarat Probabilities?

While many say that it is imporant to play the baccarat game which uses the fewest decks of cards, the difference is not so great.  The greatest odds of winning occur when betting on the banker hand using only one deck of cards.  This is mainly a concern for players playing for very high stakes, which does happen fairly often in casino baccarat.  However, unless players are going to “shop around” for a casino, there will be no choice within the same casino as to how many decks are used.