Baccarat glossary

The words on the display and at the table, defined once.

Banker, Player, Tie

The three bets. Banker and Player are hands, not people; you can bet either.

Natural

A two-card 8 or 9. No third card is drawn.

Commission

The 5% the casino keeps from winning Banker bets on standard tables.

Shoe

The box of shuffled decks, usually eight, dealt until the cut card.

Cut card

A blank card placed near the end of the shoe; when it appears, the shoe finishes after that hand.

Burn cards

Cards discarded after the shuffle before play starts, based on the first card's value.

Bead road (bead plate)

The raw record: one cell per hand, six rows per column. Guide.

Big road

Consecutive same-side wins stacked in columns; a new column starts when the other side wins.

Dragon / dragon tail

A run long enough to hit the bottom of the big road and turn sideways.

Chop

Alternating results: Banker, Player, Banker, Player. A choppy shoe has many single-cell columns.

Big Eye Boy, Small Road, Cockroach Pig

Derived roads that track whether the big road is repeating its own shape. Measured here.

Unit

Your base bet, a fixed fraction of your buy-in.

Full unit / half unit

Bet sizes for stronger and weaker calls in a graded system. Rack Chasers grades calls with a proprietary meter; the meter itself is not published.

Squeeze

Slowly revealing the cards for suspense. Changes nothing about the odds.

No commission / Super 6

A payout variant where Banker 6 pays half instead of a commission. Costs more.

House edge

The casino's expected share of each bet: 1.06% on Banker, 1.24% on Player. Full table.

Figures are measurements of logged hands and standard baccarat mathematics as of 2026-09-23. Not a forecast; no outcome is guaranteed. Decision support only; every bet is your own decision. 21+ or your local gambling age.