Baccarat Pairs Side Bet: 11:1 Sounds Great, Costs 10.36%
Last reviewed: July 2026
Baccarat’s core bets are among the cheapest in the casino — Banker costs just 1.06%. The side bets exist to fix that (for the casino). The Pairs bet is the classic example: a clean-sounding 11-to-1 wager that quietly charges ten times what the main game does.
The bet
Player Pair (or Banker Pair) wins if the first two cards dealt to that side are the same rank — two kings, two threes, whatever. It pays 11 to 1.
The real odds
In the standard eight-deck shoe, deal any first card; of the 415 cards left, 31 match its rank. That makes a pair on a given side about 7.47% of hands — fair odds of roughly 12.4 to 1. Paid at 11 to 1, the shortfall works out to a house edge of 10.36%.
Compare that to the menu you already have:
| Bet | House edge |
|---|---|
| Banker | 1.06% |
| Player | 1.24% |
| Either Pairs side bet | 10.36% |
| Tie | 14.36% |
The Pairs bet isn’t the worst thing on a baccarat layout — the Tie bet holds that title — but it lives in the same neighborhood, and one chip a hand on it can cost more than your whole Banker action.
Why side bets exist here at all
Baccarat’s main game leaves the casino very little, so the layout sprouts extras — Pairs, Perfect Pairs, Dragon Bonus, Lucky 6 — every one carrying an edge several multiples of Banker’s 1.06%. The pattern is universal in the pit: the flashier the payout, the fatter the edge.
The takeaway
If you’re at baccarat for the good math, stay on Banker and let the pairs go. If you enjoy a lottery-ticket sprinkle, know its price — about a dime per dollar, every time. Watch how rarely pairs actually land: deal a few hundred free hands.