Evolution baccarat bonus bet (Dragon Bonus): what is a 30 to 1 payout really worth?

2026-10-04

Evolution live baccarat at the Stake (stake.com) casino has several small betting spots besides Player and Banker. Two of them, the Player Bonus and Banker Bonus, are usually called the Dragon Bonus. They pay up to 30 to 1 depending on how many points the winning hand wins by. Big payouts look tempting, so we calculated the real expected value from every possible outcome of an 8-deck, 416-card shoe.

The paytable

Your chosen side has to win, and the bigger the margin, the more it pays.

Win with a natural      1 to 1
Natural tie             push
Win by 9 points        30 to 1
Win by 8               10 to 1
Win by 7                6 to 1
Win by 6                4 to 1
Win by 5                2 to 1
Win by 4                1 to 1
Win by 3 or less, lose  lose

A natural is a first two cards total of 8 or 9. How points are counted is explained in how to count baccarat points.

How often each result happens

For the Player Bonus, the probabilities are:

Natural win           16.26%
Win by 9               0.37%
Win by 8               0.68%
Win by 7               1.79%
Win by 6               2.83%
Win by 5               3.32%
Win by 4               3.74%
Natural tie            1.79%
Lose                  69.22%

The 30 to 1 win by nine points comes about once in 270 hands. Seven times out of ten the bet simply loses.

Expected value

Multiplying each payout by its probability, the Player Bonus loses 2.65% of every bet on average and the Banker Bonus loses 9.37%. The Banker side is much worse because it uses the same paytable but wins by 5 or more points less often. Thanks to the third card rule, Banker tends to win by small margins. Compared with the main bets, Player at -1.24% and Banker at -1.06%, the Player Bonus costs about twice as much and the Banker Bonus almost nine times as much.

Summary

Player Bonus EV        -2.65%
Banker Bonus EV        -9.37%
Win by 9 (30 to 1)     0.37%, about once in 270 hands
For comparison         Player -1.24% · Banker -1.06%
Method                 all outcomes of 8 decks, 416 cards (theory)

Hiddenpick is a Windows program that runs Evolution live baccarat on Stake (stake.com) for you, following the rules you set. The real result shares of the main bets, from more than 50,000 shoes, are in the truth about baccarat prediction software.