Ten Deck Baccarat

Introduction

Some tables in Singapore use a ten-deck shoe in baccarat. Here is the math for the major bets in baccarat using ten decks. The lower right cell shows a house edge of 1.23%.

As usual, when writing about baccarat, I use upper cast to refer to the bets and lower case in referring to people, to avoid confusion.

The following table shows my analysis of the Player bet.

The following table shows my analysis of the Banker bet when all wins pay 19 to 20 (or even money less a 5% commission). The lower right cell shows a house edge of 1.06%.

The following table shows my analysis of the commission-free version of the Banker bet when a win on a six pays 1 to 2. The lower right cell shows a house edge of 1.46%.

The following table shows my analysis of the commission-free version of the Banker bet when a win on a three-card seven is a push. The lower right cell shows a house edge of 1.02%.

The following table shows my analysis of the Tie bet. The lower right cell shows a house edge of 14.31%.

The following table shows my analysis of the Player Pair and Banker Pair bets. The lower right cell shows a house edge of 9.83%.

Comparison to Eight Decks

The following table shows a comparison of all the major bets between ten and eight decks. The difference column is the expected value of ten decks minus eight decks. Thus, a positive difference means a change from eight to ten decks is good for the player and negative is bad. As you can see, the difference in the Player and Banker bets is negligible. The house edge on the Tie bet is 0.05% less. However, the big different is the house edge on the Player and Banker pair bets is 0.53% less, for obvious reasons.

Written by: Michael Shackleford