Baccarat terms part 2: runs, ping-pong, betting against and the dragon tail

2026-09-25

Part 1 covered the basic words: player, banker, tie and shoe. Part 2 is about the words people use while looking at the roadmaps. Most of them come from the big road, so one picture makes them easy to follow.

Left: one-cell columns alternating (ping-pong). Middle: the same side continuing (a run).

Column

A single vertical column on the big road where the same side keeps winning. Three banker wins in a row make a banker column of 3. When the side changes, a new column starts to the right.

Long run

A column that goes on for a long time. People draw the line in different places, but usually five or six cells or more. In real data, just over half of all columns end after one cell, and columns of five or more make up about 6% of all columns.

Ping-pong

One-cell columns following each other: player, banker, player, banker. On the big road the single cells line up side by side. Some players call it chop.

Following and betting against

These describe how you bet. Following means betting on the side that just won. Betting against means betting on the other side. Following looks right in a shoe with long runs, betting against looks right in a shoe full of ping-pong. Which kind of shoe it will be is only clear afterwards.

Tail

The big road is only six cells tall. When a column goes past six, there is no room to go down, so it continues sideways along the bottom. That sideways part is called the tail, or the dragon tail. A tail means that column reached seven or more.

First column

The first column that appears on the big road after a new shoe starts. It is used when talking about how a shoe began.

Summary

Column          same side continuing downwards
Long run        usually 5 to 6 cells or more
Ping-pong       one-cell columns in a row (chop)
Following       bet on the side that just won
Against         bet on the other side
Tail            the part that turns sideways after 6 (dragon tail)

Hiddenpick is a Windows program that runs Evolution live baccarat on Stake (stake.com) for you, following the rules you set. The rules for drawing the bead road and big road are in how to read baccarat roadmaps.