Does card counting work in 8-deck baccarat? Even with every 4 gone, Banker stays negative

2026-10-03

Blackjack has card counting: you track the cards that have been dealt and bet big when the remaining cards favour you. Baccarat deals from a shoe too, so why not count? Using the 8-deck rules of Evolution live baccarat at the Stake (stake.com) casino, we removed cards rank by rank and calculated the expected value over every possible hand.

The starting point

With all 416 cards in the shoe, a Banker bet loses 1.06% on average and a Player bet loses 1.24%. For counting to matter, the remaining cards would have to push one of these above zero.

What one card changes

We calculated how far the expected value moves when a single card of each rank leaves the shoe.

One 4 removed        Banker +0.0116 pts
One 6 removed        Player +0.0113 pts
One 1, 2 or 3        Banker +0.004 to 0.006 pts
One 5, 7 or 8        Player +0.005 to 0.008 pts

Even the strongest card, the 4, moves things by about 0.01 percentage points. To bring Banker up to zero, more than 90 cards of this kind would have to leave the shoe on one side.

Pushing it to the extreme

Next we removed whole ranks. With all 32 fours gone, Banker is still at -0.74%. With all 32 sixes gone, Player is still at -0.77%.

Banker first crosses zero only when all 128 cards ranked 1, 2, 3 and 4 are gone, and even then it is +0.005%. Player needs every 5, 6 and 7, 96 cards, to disappear before it reaches +0.016%. A real shoe practically never skews this far.

Why baccarat is not blackjack

In blackjack a few cards help the player and the dealer very differently, so the imbalance shows up quickly. In baccarat the third card rule works on both sides in a very similar way, so the pull toward one side is weak. And with 8 decks and only four to six cards per hand, any imbalance builds up slowly.

Summary

Starting EV              Banker -1.06% · Player -1.24%
Effect of one card       about 0.01 pts at most (4 and 6)
All 32 fours removed     Banker -0.74%
Banker above zero only   when all 128 cards ranked 1-4 are gone (+0.005%)
Method                   8 decks, 416 cards, every hand under the third card rule

Hiddenpick is a Windows program that runs Evolution live baccarat on Stake (stake.com) for you, following the rules you set. Whether cards or road patterns can predict the next hand is covered in the truth about baccarat prediction software.