Live baccarat rules: Player, Banker, Tie and the 5% commission

Live baccarat deals two hands, Player and Banker, from a shoe in front of a camera. Your bet is on the hand that finishes nearer nine, or on the two finishing level. A winning Player bet is paid even money, a winning Banker bet is paid even money minus a 5% commission (0.95:1 net), and a Tie pays 8:1 at a standard table.

Once bets close, nobody at the table makes a decision: fixed drawing rules settle every card. That makes baccarat the easiest table game to price, and the edge of each bet below is derived from those rules with an eight-deck shoe. The term itself is set out in the meaning of house edge.

How is a live baccarat round dealt?

Each hand starts with two cards. Aces count 1, the cards 2 to 9 keep their number, and tens and picture cards count 0. Only the last digit of the total counts, so a 7 and an 8 make 5, not 15.

If either hand totals 8 or 9 on its first two cards, that is a natural and both hands stand. Otherwise the Player hand draws a third card on 0 to 5 and stands on 6 or 7. The Banker hand then follows the chart below, which turns on its own total and on the Player's third card.

Evolution says each of its baccarat game pages carries a how-to-play section on this Third Card Rule, with a fuller help panel inside the game. Pace differs by table: Evolution puts a standard round at about 48 seconds and a Speed Baccarat round at 27 seconds, with the cards dealt face up.

What do Player, Banker and Tie pay, and what does each cost?

Banker draws last and with more to go on, so it wins slightly more often than Player. The commission pulls it back below break-even. The figures below are derived for an eight-deck shoe.

The Player edge is the gap between the two win rates, 45.86% less 44.62%. The Tie wins a little under one round in ten, while 8:1 would be fair only for a bet that wins one round in nine, and that shortfall is the 14.36%. A table that prints another Tie payout has another Tie edge, and its pay table says which applies.

How does the 5% banker commission work?

The commission is charged only on a winning Banker bet. A losing Banker bet loses its stake as normal, and on a tie the Banker bet comes back in full.

Illustrative example: you stake KES 2,000 on Banker and Banker wins. The commission is 5% of the KES 2,000 won, KES 100, so you collect KES 1,900 profit plus your stake. The same win on Player would have paid KES 2,000 profit.

Illustrative example, per 100 rounds at KES 100 on Banker: about 45.86 wins at KES 95 bring KES 4,356.70, about 44.62 losses cost KES 4,462, and the 9.52 ties hand the stake back. The result is a loss of about KES 105 on KES 10,000 staked; with the frequencies carried to more decimal places it comes to 1.06%.

Without the commission, Banker would hand the player an edge of 1.24%, the same gap that works against the Player bet. Taking 5% off every Banker win turns that into a house edge of 1.06%. A commission of about 2.7% would leave the bet at break-even, so the 5% is what it costs to back the stronger hand.

How do no-commission tables make up the 5%?

No-commission tables pay a winning Banker bet at 1:1 and collect the house share from one result instead. Evolution's No Commission Baccarat page states that when the Banker wins with a total of 6, the bet pays half, 0.5:1. A Banker win on any other total pays in full.

A Banker win on 6 comes in about 5.39% of rounds (derived, eight decks). Halving the payout on those rounds lifts the edge on the no-commission Banker bet to about 1.46%, above the 1.06% of the commission version.

Illustrative example: KES 1,000 on Banker at a no-commission table. If Banker wins with 7, you collect KES 1,000 profit; if Banker wins with 6, you collect KES 500.

Evolution pairs that table with a Super 6 side bet, which its page says pays 15:1 when the Banker scores 6. Pragmatic Play says a No Commission Baccarat mode is available at all its tables and can be switched on at any time. Its product page does not say how that mode pays a Banker win, so the rules panel is where to look.

What do Lightning and other fee-based tables change?

Several variants add a fee to every bet and spend it on random multipliers. In Evolution's Lightning Baccarat, one to five Lightning Cards are drawn each round from a virtual 52-card deck, each carrying 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x or 8x, and a 20% Lightning Fee is added to each player's total bet.

XXXtreme Lightning Baccarat raises that to four to eight Lightning Cards with multipliers of up to 10x, against a 50% fee on each player's total bet, Evolution's page says. On the same provider's overview, Peek Baccarat charges 20% on a Player or Banker bet for a look at one to four cards, after which you may double or triple the stake.

Once a fee is part of the price, the 1.06% and 1.24% figures stop describing the bet. The variant's own published RTP is the figure to compare, and the guide to RTP figures live casino providers publish gathers them.

What are the side bets and the roads on screen?

Evolution's default side bets are Player Pair and Banker Pair, which win when that hand's first two cards are a pair, and its overview gives the payout for either as 11 to 1. Player Bonus, Banker Bonus, Either Pair and Perfect Pairs can be switched on in the game settings, with odds of up to 200 to 1.

The roads are scoreboards. Evolution lists the Bead Road and Big Road, which record each past round, and the Big Eye Road, Small Road and Cockroach Road, which draw patterns from the Big Road. They record history; the drawing rules and the cards left in the shoe decide the next hand, and the edges above hold whatever a road shows.

Pragmatic Play says its baccarat tables carry all five traditional roads, several side bets and a manual zoom on the Player's cards. How cards are dealt, read and shuffled on camera is covered in the guide to cards, shoes and cameras at live tables.

What does Kenyan law require a baccarat table to display?

Regulation 20(2) of L.N. 112, the Gambling Control (Conduct of Gambling Operations) Regulations, 2026, names four things a licensee must display clearly: game rules, odds, house edge and the average return to the player. Regulation 20(3) makes that list apply to online gambling too, adapted where needed.

At a baccarat table the list takes in the commission, the Tie payout, any Lightning or Peek fee and the side-bet pay tables. Regulation 23(2) forbids altering the terms of a bet after it has been accepted, so no commission can be added to a Banker bet already on the felt.

What the figures here do not tell you

These figures are long-run prices, not forecasts, and no road pattern moves them. A short session can finish well away from the average, up or down.

The rules and payouts reference for live tables sets baccarat beside roulette and blackjack. The same style of arithmetic applied to the wheel is in live roulette bets and payouts.