Baccarat or Roulette: which has better odds?

When it comes to the casino there are a few games that people are drawn to over others - whether you go to your local brick and mortar or you're a regular at Betfair Casino, there's going to be a game you're more drawn to than others. If you're the kind of gambler who values skill, strategy and calculated deployment then you're probably going to be drawn to Blackjack where you can apply the most strategy - if you're the type who just wants to be entertained then slots is likely going to be your game of choice. But what if you were after something more? What if you were looking for a game of pure chance? Well, your best bets are going to be Roulette or Baccarat. Both offer you an approximately 50:50 chance of victory if you bet a certain way. But which is better?

Roulette

Roulette is a casino classic, a game of pure chance where your fate is in the hands of lady luck with every spin. If we're doing a comparison to Blackjack, then we need to look at just the red/black or odds/evens bets as the comparable point to Baccarat's dealer or player bet. Unfortunately, before we can properly answer this, we have to know which game it is that we’re playing as the odds are different depending on if you're playing European or American roulette. If American then you have two zero spaces available for the House Edge which lowers your odds to a 47.4% chance of winning for either red or black. If you’re playing European, however, the odds are 48.6% in your favour, a pretty sizeable difference.

The pay-out is the same for both, 1 to 1. Roulette offers a wide variety of betting options however, and it's possible to use that to your advantage by betting on more than on outcome. Baccarat by comparison has fewer betting options - but how do the odds look?

Baccarat

Baccarat is actually a little different from roulette as it isn't really an even chance game. The probability of winning a banker's bet is about 45.8% and the probability of winning a player's bet is about 44.6% with the remaining 9.5% reserved for draws. The odds of winning if you bet on the banker's hand are actually higher than the odds of winning if you bet on the player which sounds ideal, right? Well, the casino has to have an edge somewhere, and that edge is found in the Vig, or Vigorish, a small commission on the winnings which makes the pay-out 95% of the stake instead of 100% as it is with the player bet (and an impressive 8 times the stake if you bet on the unlikely event of a tie).

With the vig in place, the odds are now returned to approximately 50:50 (not accounting for house edge) as they are for roulette.

So which is better?

Well, it's a hard question to answer – whichever game appeals to you most is the one that you should be looking to play. Both rely on pure luck so it really is just down to fate. Good luck!