Does the banker really win more in baccarat? The ratio from 1.68 million hands

2026-09-26

Play baccarat for a while and someone will tell you the banker comes up a little more. That is true. What is rarely said is how much more, and what that difference actually means. We checked with real hands collected from Evolution live baccarat at the Stake (stake.com) casino.

How we counted

We used shoes recorded completely from the first hand to the last between September 9 and 24, 2026: 25,133 shoes, 1,683,943 hands, from 96 tables.

What actually came up

Share of each result over all hands.

Banker 46.1%, player 44.6%, tie 9.3%. Take out ties and look only at banker against player, and the banker has 50.85%.

For 8-deck baccarat the theory says banker 45.86%, player 44.62%, tie 9.52%, and 50.68% for the banker without ties. The real data is almost the same as theory. Ties come out slightly lower than theory, most likely because in the collected records the tie in the first one or two hands of a shoe sometimes gets merged with the hands around it.

Why the banker comes up more

It comes from the drawing order. The player decides first whether to take a third card, and the banker decides after seeing the player's third card. The banker acts with one more piece of information, which gives it a small edge.

So is betting banker a gain?

No. In exchange, a banker win pays with a 5% commission taken off. Over all records, every 1 bet on the banker loses 0.84% on average. Remove every shoe with odd timing between hands and keep only the 8,228 clean shoes, and the banker is at 50.68%, exactly the theoretical value, losing 1.15% per bet on average. Either way it is negative. The player has no commission but comes up less, so it loses more. The banker is simply the side that loses a bit less, not the side that wins.

Summary

Hands                 1,683,943 (25,133 shoes)
Banker/player/tie     46.1% / 44.6% / 9.3%
Banker without ties   50.85% (theory 50.68%)
Average per banker 1  -0.84% (all) / -1.15% (clean shoes)
Average per player 1  around -1.4%

Hiddenpick is a Windows program that runs Evolution live baccarat on Stake (stake.com) for you, following the rules you set. How these numbers are collected is explained in what the R&D center does.