In standard baccarat, a winning Banker bet is paid at 95% net profit: a 10-unit stake that wins returns 9.5 units of profit, which is 19.5 units of gross return once the stake comes back. In a common no-commission variant, the Banker bet is paid at full even money except when Banker wins with a total of 6, where it pays half. Those two sentences hold the whole difference. Everything else is arithmetic about where the casino’s margin gets collected.
Two terms to pin down first
Margin talk gets muddled when “payout” is used loosely, so two definitions will be used throughout. Net profit is what you gain beyond your own stake: stake 10, win 9.5, net profit 9.5. Gross return is everything handed back to you, stake included: 19.5 in the same case. A loss has a net result of minus 10 and a gross return of zero. A tie on a Banker or Player bet is a push: gross return equals the stake, net profit zero.
The “95%” attached to Banker in the standard game refers to net profit. Some tables describe it as a 5% commission, which is the same thing seen from the other side: the house keeps one-twentieth of the winning amount. It does not mean you receive 95% of your stake back.
Why Banker needs a correction at all
Under the usual third-card drawing rules, Banker wins slightly more often than Player. For an eight-deck shoe, the commonly cited outcome frequencies are roughly 45.9% Banker, 44.6% Player and 9.5% tie. Those percentages are widely published figures for the standard rules and are used here only as an illustration, not as a claim about any particular table.
If Banker paid a clean 1 to 1, a player backing Banker every hand would hold a small statistical edge over the house. The commission exists to remove it. Charging 5% on Banker wins pulls the expected result for that bet below zero, so the casino keeps a modest, steady margin on the best-looking wager in the game.
A worked illustration with a hypothetical 1,000 hands at 10 units each, using the frequencies above, makes the scale visible. Banker wins about 459 hands and loses about 446; roughly 95 hands tie and push. Without commission, the net is 459 × 10 − 446 × 10 = +130 units. With the 5% charge, the 459 wins pay 9.5 each: 459 × 9.5 = 4,360.5, minus 4,460 in losses, giving about −99.5 units. Averaged over the non-tie action that sits near a 1% house edge on total amount bet. The exact figure depends on the rules and the shoe, so treat this as a demonstration of mechanism rather than a statement about any game’s published return.
How the no-commission version moves the same margin elsewhere
The no-commission format deletes the bookkeeping step of collecting 5% on wins, which speeds up dealing and removes the commission marker from the table layout. But a casino cannot simply give up the edge it was collecting, so the rule change has to carry an offsetting penalty. In the widely seen variant, that penalty is the “Banker 6” rule: when Banker wins with a total of exactly 6, the bet pays 1 to 2, half the stake in net profit, rather than even money.
This works because a Banker win on 6 is a fairly common event, occurring on roughly one Banker win in eight or so under standard drawing rules. Cutting those wins in half recovers, on average, an amount in the same neighbourhood as the 5% commission. The margin hasn’t vanished; it has been relocated from every Banker win to a specific subset of Banker wins.
Ten hypothetical 10-unit settlements
The examples below are invented for illustration. Each shows net profit and gross return on a 10-unit stake.
Standard commission game
1. Banker bet, Banker wins 8 to 5. Net profit 9.5; gross return 19.5.
2. Banker bet, Banker wins 6 to 3. Same as above: net 9.5; gross 19.5. The total of 6 changes nothing here.
3. Player bet, Player wins 7 to 4. Net profit 10; gross return 20.
4. Banker bet, hand ties 5 to 5. Push: net 0; gross 10.
No-commission variant with the Banker 6 rule
5. Banker bet, Banker wins 9 to 2. Net profit 10; gross return 20, better than the commission game’s 9.5.
6. Banker bet, Banker wins with 6 against 4. Net profit 5; gross return 15, worse than the commission game’s 9.5.
7. Player bet, Player wins 6 to 5. Net profit 10; gross 20. The half-pay clause applies only to Banker bets, so a Player win on 6 is unaffected.
8. Banker bet, Player wins. Net −10; gross 0, identical in both formats.
Other no-commission structures
Not every no-commission table uses the Banker 6 rule. Some games instead pay Banker winners at even money but treat specific three-card totals differently, for example paying less when Banker wins with a particular three-card hand, or returning only the stake in some defined circumstance. Operators and game designers choose the penalty that fits their math model and their desired side-bet ecosystem.
9. A hypothetical variant pays Banker at even money except when Banker wins with a three-card total of 7, which pays 1 to 2. A 10-unit Banker bet winning with a three-card 7 would net 5, gross 15; winning with a two-card 8 would net 10, gross 20.
10. Another hypothetical variant returns only the stake (a push) on any Banker win with a total of 6 rather than paying half. The same 10-unit bet would net 0, gross 10 on that result. Whether such a variant exists at a given table is a question for its posted rules, not an assumption this article can make.
The point of examples 9 and 10 is not that these variants are common, but that the category “no-commission” names a goal rather than a single rule set. Anyone comparing two tables labelled that way should expect the exceptions to differ, and should expect their effect on long-run returns to differ too.
What changes for the player
Mathematically, the commission game and the Banker 6 game land close together but not at the same point. Published analyses of the Banker 6 variant generally put its house edge on Banker slightly higher than the standard game’s, with the Player bet unchanged. That makes the choice between formats a matter of small percentages, which is why no one should treat “no commission” as shorthand for “better for the player.” It is better in session pace and simplicity, and different in where results fall.
Variance also shifts. Under commission, every Banker win is shaved a little. Under Banker 6, most wins are full and a minority are cut sharply. A player’s bankroll graph feels different even if the long-run expectation is similar: more clean wins, with occasional half-sized ones that can sting.
Reading the table, not the headline
The practical takeaway is to treat the printed rules as the authority. Look for the Banker payout line, any stated exception for a winning total, and how ties are handled. Check whether side bets attached to the game change the effective house take on the main wager. Return-to-player and house-edge figures vary by rule set, deck count and jurisdiction, and the operator or the game’s regulator-facing documentation is the place to confirm them. The shorthand “commission versus no commission” is accurate about the mechanics and silent about the mathematics, and the mathematics lives in the exceptions.