Baccarat Side Bets Explained

Baccarat side bets are the optional wagers sitting around the main Player, Banker and Tie boxes, and nearly all of them are far worse value than the bet they sit next to. The main Banker bet costs you about 1.06%. The side bets on the same felt run from 2.65% to 29.98%.

That spread is the whole story, and it is why a list of payouts is not much use on its own. This guide gives every common side bet with its real payout, its house edge, and the number of decks that edge assumes, because these bets move with the deck count and most guides never tell you which game they costed.

Side bets are extra wagers you place alongside your main bet, not instead of it. You are not backing a hand to win. You are backing a specific event, usually a pair, a card count, a winning margin or an exact total.

They resolve on the same deal, they pay far more than even money, and they hit rarely. That combination is what makes them feel generous and what makes them expensive.

Why the Deck Count Changes the Answer

Most of these bets are settled by the first two cards, so the odds depend on how many cards are in the shoe. Take the pair bet. After your first card lands, the chance the next one matches its rank is 31 in 415 on an eight-deck shoe and 23 in 311 on six. At 11:1 that is a house edge of 10.36% on eight decks and 11.25% on six.

Same bet. Same payout. Nearly a full point of difference, decided by a number the lobby rarely puts in front of you.

Player Pair and Banker Pair

The most common side bets in the game. You are betting that the first two cards dealt to that side form a pair, and the standard payout is 11:1. On an eight-deck shoe that is a 10.36% house edge. On six decks it is 11.25%.

Some software deals a different version. Playtech’s pair bet pays 9:1 with a 75:1 bonus for three of a kind, which works out much cheaper at around 5.27%. Check the paytable before you assume.

Either Pair

One bet covering both hands, paying 5:1 if either side pairs up. It costs 14.54% on six decks and 13.71% on eight. Wider coverage, worse price. That is usually how these things work.

Perfect Pair

This one needs a suited pair, so two cards identical in rank and suit. It pays 25:1. On eight decks the house edge is 13.03%, and on the six decks Playtech actually uses it climbs to 17.07%.

Big and Small

Nothing to do with card values. You are betting on how many cards the round uses. Small pays 3:2 if four cards settle it, for a 5.27% edge. Big pays 0.54:1 if five or six cards are needed, for 4.35%, both on six decks.

Big is the cheapest side bet on this whole page. It is also the dullest, which tells you something about how the pricing works.

Dragon Bonus

You back a side to win, and you get paid more the wider it wins by, up to 30:1 for a nine-point margin. It also pays on a natural win. Crucially this is two separate bets, and they are not close in value: the Player version costs 2.65% and the Banker version costs 9.37% on eight decks.

If you are going to make one side bet all night, make it this one, on the Player side. It is the only common option in the same postcode as the main game.

Dragon 7

From EZ Baccarat. It pays 40:1 when the Banker wins with a three-card total of seven, and the house edge is 7.61% on eight decks. You will see 200:1 quoted for this bet in a lot of places. That is wrong, and it matters, because a 200:1 quote makes a 7.61% bet look like a lottery ticket worth buying.

Panda 8

The mirror image, and the worse one. It pays 25:1 when the Player wins with a three-card total of eight, for a 10.19% edge on eight decks. The two bets sit side by side on the same layout and one costs you a third more than the other.

Super 6

A flat 12:1 if the Banker wins with a total of six, and a 29.98% house edge. That is the most expensive bet in this guide and it is not close.

It exists for a reason worth understanding. Super 6 lives on no-commission tables, where instead of taking 5% of Banker wins the house pays a winning Banker six at only 1 to 2. That rule pushes the Banker bet from roughly 1.06% to 1.46%, and the side bet is sold to you as compensation for the very rule that created it.

Lucky Six

The same idea, dealt mostly in Asian rooms and on some live tables, usually paying more for a three-card six than a two-card one. Payouts vary enough between operators that a single house edge figure would be misleading, so check the paytable on the table you are actually sitting at. Treat it as Super 6’s family, and price it accordingly.

Tie and Egalite

The standard Tie pays 8:1 or 9:1 and is a bad bet at either price. Egalite bets narrow it further: you name the exact total the tie lands on, say two sixes, and get paid much more for being right. The rarer the total you pick, the bigger the payout, and the paytables differ sharply between providers.

Royal Match

Worth a warning. Royal Match is a blackjack side bet, and the one analysis of a baccarat version describes it as an unconfirmed report from a few London rooms, paying 75:1 suited and 30:1 unsuited. You will find plenty of pages telling you to look for it in live lobbies. We could not confirm it is offered at all.

All Red and All Black

Novelty bets on every card in a hand sharing a color, paying around 22:1 where they appear. Fun for a spin. Not a strategy.

Not every Baccarat table carries side bets. Plenty of RNG versions ship with Player, Banker and Tie and nothing else, and the older the software, the thinner the menu.

Evolution’s live tables carry the widest range, including Perfect Pair, Dragon Bonus and Egalite. Pragmatic Play runs a shorter list built around Super 6 and the standard pair bets. Red Rake and Betsoft tend to offer Big and Small alongside pairs on their virtual tables.

What to Check Before You Sit Down

Open the table info panel and read two things: the paytable and the number of decks. Those two numbers decide the price of every bet on this page, and both are usually one tap away.

You will find deep live Baccarat lobbies at MetaWin, BC.Game and Gamdom, and across most live dealer casinos. If the side bet you want is not on the layout, it is not hiding in a menu.

Mostly, no. Set them against the bet you are already allowed to make and the case gets hard to argue: the Banker bet costs about 1.06%, and the cheapest side bet here is Big at 4.35%. Everything else is worse, several are worse by a factor of ten.

The Three That Survive the Comparison

Dragon Bonus on the Player side at 2.65% is the only one that is genuinely defensible. Big at 4.35% and Small at 5.27% are tolerable if you want something extra riding on the deal without paying much for it.

The pair bets at 10.36% are an entertainment charge, not a wager. Super 6 at 29.98% is close to handing over a third of the stake.

None of that means never touch them. If a small side bet keeps a long shoe interesting, that is worth something, and it is your money. Just size them as what they are.

What These Percentages Cost in Actual Money

A house edge is a rate, not a fee, so it only means something once you attach it to a stake. Here is the same list again as the average cost of putting $1,000 through each bet, which at $10 a hand is about a hundred hands of live Baccarat.

Read the top and bottom rows together, because that is the decision. The same $1,000 costs you about $10 on the main bet and close to $300 on Super 6. Nothing about the table, the dealer or the run of cards changes that. It is priced in before the shoe is even opened.

These are long-run averages, so a single session can land anywhere. That is the point of a side bet and it is also the trap: the variance is what makes an expensive bet feel affordable on the night you win.

Every figure below is the published house edge with the deck count it assumes. Where a bet is dealt on both six and eight decks, both are shown, because the difference is real.

Two bets are missing on purpose. Egalite and Lucky Six have paytables that differ so much between providers that a single figure would be worse than no figure, so read the table you are on. And if a lobby quotes you a payout that does not match this list, trust the lobby and re-price the bet yourself.

The honest summary is short. Dragon Bonus on the Player side is the only common Baccarat side bet that stands up next to the main game. Big and Small are cheap enough to be harmless. Everything else is paying for a thrill, and Super 6 is paying a lot.

If you want the long odds, take them knowingly and keep them small. The one habit worth building is the boring one: check the paytable and the deck count before the first hand, because those two numbers are the difference between a 10.36% bet and an 11.25% one, and nobody at the table is going to point it out for you.

Then go and enjoy the game. It is still one of the best bets in the building, as long as you stick to the box in the middle.