Baccarat rules and the variants you'll see in London

Start with the name, because it causes more confusion than it should.

"Baccarat" names at least three distinct games that share a scoring system but disagree on almost everything else: who banks the shoe, whether players make decisions, how many hands are dealt, and what the table looks like. In a London casino in 2026, the version you'll encounter at any public table is almost certainly Punto Banco. Chemin de Fer is the romance; Punto Banco is the reality. Mini Baccarat is a smaller, faster version of the same thing. Knowing which game you're walking up to is the first practical matter, because asking a croupier to explain the rules mid-session is an inefficient way to spend an evening.

The scoring system is identical across all variants. Cards two through nine count at face value. Tens, jacks, queens, and kings count as zero. Aces count as one. The hand total is the rightmost digit of the sum: 7 + 8 = 15, so the hand value is 5. A total of 8 or 9 from the first two cards is a "natural" and ends the hand immediately. Everything else triggers the drawing rules, which the next lesson covers in full. The drawing rules are fixed; no variant of Punto Banco requires or permits any player to decide whether to draw.

Punto Banco: the game London actually plays

Punto Banco, also called Nevada Baccarat in North American literature, arrived in British casinos in the 1960s and has been the standard ever since. The mechanics are uncomplicated. The dealer draws two hands from the shoe: one labelled Punto (Player) and one labelled Banco (Banker). You bet before the draw on which hand will come closer to 9, or on a Tie. The drawing rules are fixed by the house; no player at the table makes any decision about whether to draw a third card. The casino takes the Banker role permanently.

The Hippodrome Casino at Leicester Square runs Punto Banco across its main gaming floor and in the Lautrec high-limit room, as do Les Ambassadeurs at Hamilton Place and the other Mayfair rooms. If you walk up to a baccarat table in London and it doesn't specify otherwise, you're playing Punto Banco.

The edge numbers matter here. On an 8-deck shoe with standard commission rules: Banker bet 1.06%, Player bet 1.24%, Tie bet 14.36% in our analysis baccarat analysis. That Tie figure is not a misprint. The Tie pays 8-to-1 at most tables, which sounds reasonable until you calculate that a fair payout for its actual probability would be roughly 9.5-to-1. The casino keeps 14.36% of every Tie bet placed. Leave it alone.

Punto Banco is also the most transparent form of the game from an edge perspective. There are no strategic decisions to complicate the calculation. The expected cost of a session is bet size multiplied by hands per hour multiplied by the relevant edge percentage. You can use the baccarat shoe simulator to run those numbers for your specific stake before sitting down at a live table.

Chemin de Fer: where the romance lives

Chemin de Fer ("the railway," referring to the shoe that travels around the table) is the form of baccarat James Bond plays in Ian Fleming's novels, most famously in Casino Royale. At a Chemin de Fer table, players take turns holding the shoe and banking against the other players. The banker can draw or stand on a 5; the punter can draw or stand on a 5. There are actual decisions. The casino takes a percentage of each banker win, called the cagnotte, rather than fixing the edge through payout asymmetry.

This variant was standard at the Casino de Deauville in Normandy, at the Casino de Monte-Carlo's Salle Medecin, and at the private London clubs of the mid-20th century. Crockfords at 30 Curzon Street ran Chemin de Fer tables until well into the 1980s. The room closed in October 2023 after 195 years at that address, and with it went the last regular public Chemin de Fer game in central London. You won't find a public Chemin de Fer table in London today. If you do locate one at a private club, the house edge is somewhat lower for a skilled player who knows the drawing decision on 5, which is precisely why casinos stopped offering it at scale.

The cultural significance of Chemin de Fer to baccarat's reputation is disproportionate to its current availability. The prestige of the game in 20th-century Europe was built around private rooms, large stakes, and a ritual that Punto Banco streamlined away entirely. Understanding the variant helps explain why baccarat has the social register it does; playing it regularly in 2026 requires some effort to find a suitable room.

Mini Baccarat: the fast version

Mini Baccarat uses identical rules to Punto Banco but runs on a blackjack-sized table seating seven players, with a single dealer who handles all card operations. The dealer flips both hands face-up immediately, no ritual, no passing cards under a chip. Limits are generally lower. The pace is considerably faster: you can see 70 to 80 rounds per hour at a busy Mini Baccarat table, compared to 40 to 50 at a standard Punto Banco layout.

The higher pace matters for your bankroll arithmetic. The house edge percentage is the same, but £100/hand x 80 hands/hour x 1.06% gives you an expected hourly cost of £84.80 on the Banker bet, compared to £100/hand x 45 hands/hour x 1.06% = £47.70 at a standard table. The mathematics is identical; the speed changes the practical result considerably over a 2 to 3 hour session. A player who chooses Mini Baccarat for the atmosphere of a smaller table should understand that the lower limits don't compensate for the higher round rate on identical stakes.

Baccarat Banque and other variants

A third variant, Baccarat Banque (or Deux Tableaux), deals three hands: one Banker hand and two Punto hands dealt to opposite sides of the table. Players on each side bet against the Banker. It's rare in London, and you're unlikely to encounter it on any standard public floor. The Casino de Monte-Carlo's private rooms have been known to offer it on request to serious players who specifically seek it out. For practical purposes in 2026, treat it as a historical curiosity.

Some UK tables also offer EZ Baccarat, a no-commission variant where a Banker win with a three-card total of 7 pushes rather than pays. This is the operator's mechanism for eliminating commission while maintaining a house edge. The UKGC permits EZ Baccarat under the standard gaming licence. The edge on the Banker bet under EZ Baccarat rules is approximately 1.02%, marginally lower than the standard 5% commission version, making it one of the few no-commission variants where Banker actually improves. Read the placard carefully; the specific rule (three-card 7 pushes, or Banker-6 pays half) determines the edge.

Key numbers

Sources: our baccarat analysis basics, UK Gambling Commission, Hippodrome Casino table games.