Baccarat Card Values Explained

The one table you need before anything else in baccarat makes sense

Every rule in baccarat — naturals, the third-card chart, how a round settles — sits on top of one small table of card values. Get this part wrong and nothing downstream will add up correctly, which is exactly why it's worth isolating on its own before moving on to scoring or the drawing rules. Unlike blackjack, poker, or most other card games you might already know, baccarat strips card values down to almost nothing: there's no high-card ranking, no suit hierarchy, and — critically — no flexible Ace. This page covers exactly what each card is worth and works through several hands so the arithmetic becomes second nature. For the full rulebook this fits into, see the baccarat guide for beginners or the more detailed baccarat rules explained.

The full value list

Baccarat's card values, in full:

• Ace is worth 1.
• 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are worth their printed face value — a 6 is worth 6, an 8 is worth 8, and so on.
• 10, Jack, Queen, and King are all worth 0.

That's the entire list. Every card in the deck fits into one of these three categories, and suit — clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades — has no bearing on value or outcome at all. A 7 of clubs and a 7 of diamonds are worth exactly the same thing.

Why Aces count as 1, not 11

Players coming from blackjack often expect the Ace to do double duty — worth 1 or 11 depending on what helps the hand — because that's how it behaves there. Baccarat doesn't work that way. The Ace has a single, fixed value: 1. There's no "soft" or "hard" version of a baccarat hand, no decision about which value to use, and no scenario where an Ace is worth anything other than 1. This is one of the most common points of confusion for players moving between the two games, so it's worth stating plainly: if you see an Ace in a baccarat hand, treat it as a 1 and nothing else, every time.

Why 10s and face cards count as zero

The other detail that surprises newcomers is that 10, Jack, Queen, and King — normally the most valuable cards in a deck — are worth precisely nothing in baccarat. This isn't an oversight; it flows directly from how baccarat totals work. Because hand totals are calculated modulo 10 (the tens digit gets dropped whenever a sum reaches double digits — covered in full in baccarat scoring explained), giving 10-value cards a value of 10 would functionally be the same as giving them a value of 0 in most calculations anyway. Baccarat simply assigns them 0 directly, which keeps the arithmetic simpler and avoids ever needing to do the modulo step on the individual card before adding it to the hand.

Practically, this means a hand containing a King and a 10 together sums to zero — the lowest possible total in the game, sometimes called "baccarat" itself in reference to the game's name.

Worked examples: adding up two-card totals

Example 1: 4 and 6. A 4 and a 6 sum to 10. Since 10 reaches double digits, the tens digit is dropped, leaving a total of 0. Despite being made of two mid-value cards, this hand has the lowest possible total in the game.

Example 2: Queen and 7. The Queen is worth 0, and the 7 is worth its face value of 7. Sum: 0 + 7 = 7. No tens digit to drop here, so the total is simply 7 — a strong total that stands under the third-card rule.

Example 3: Ace and 8. The Ace is worth 1, and the 8 is worth its face value. Sum: 1 + 8 = 9. This is a natural 9, the single best two-card total available, and the hand settles immediately without a third card.

Example 4: King and Jack. Both cards are worth 0. Sum: 0 + 0 = 0. Like Example 1, this is the lowest possible total, even though it's made up of two "high" cards by ordinary card-game standards.

Example 5: 9 and 5. Sum: 9 + 5 = 14. The tens digit is dropped, leaving a total of 4 — a hand that will draw a third card under the standard third-card rule, since any Player or Banker total of 0 through 5 draws (see baccarat rules explained for the full drawing chart).

Common beginner mix-ups

Treating the Ace as flexible. As covered above, the Ace is always 1 in baccarat — there's no blackjack-style choice between 1 and 11.

Assuming 10-value cards are worth 10. They're worth 0, full stop. This trips up players who default to blackjack instincts, where a 10, Jack, Queen, and King are all treated as equally valuable at 10 points each.

Forgetting that suits are irrelevant. There's no suit ranking anywhere in baccarat — not for card value, not for breaking ties, not for anything. If you find yourself looking at a card's suit for information, it's a habit worth dropping.

Confusing card value with hand total. A card's value is fixed and never changes. A hand's total is calculated by summing the values of the cards in that hand and then applying the drop-the-tens-digit rule if needed — the two are related but distinct concepts, and the second one is where most of the actual game logic lives.

How card values feed into scoring

Card values are the raw ingredients; hand totals are what you get after adding them up and applying the modulo-10 rule. Every subsequent piece of baccarat logic — whether a hand is a natural, whether it draws a third card, and which of the three bets wins a given round — is built entirely on top of these values and that single arithmetic rule. Once card values are second nature, the rest of the game's mechanics tend to click into place quickly, since there's genuinely nothing more complicated sitting underneath them. For the full mechanics of how totals are calculated and compared, see baccarat scoring explained, and for the complete rulebook this all fits into, see baccarat rules explained.

Frequently asked questions

What is an Ace worth in baccarat? Always 1. Unlike blackjack, there's no alternate value — the Ace never counts as anything other than 1.

What are 10, Jack, Queen, and King worth? All four are worth 0. They contribute nothing to a hand's numeric total.

Do suits matter for card value in baccarat? No. Suits have zero effect on value, on hand outcomes, or on any other part of the game. Only the numeric value of each card matters.

What's the lowest possible two-card total in baccarat? Zero, achieved by any combination of two cards worth 0 (any pair of 10s, face cards, or a mix of the two) or any pair whose sum is exactly 10 or 20 before the tens digit is dropped.

What's the highest possible two-card total? Nine, a natural, achieved by combinations like Ace+8, 9+King, or 4+5.

Why are 10-value cards worth 0 instead of 10? Because baccarat totals are calculated modulo 10 — the tens digit is always dropped from a two-digit sum. Assigning 10-value cards a value of 0 directly keeps the math simple and consistent with how every other total in the game is handled.

Is card value the same for the Player hand and the Banker hand? Yes. Card values are universal and apply identically regardless of which hand — Player or Banker — the card is dealt to.

Does card value affect the third-card rule? Indirectly, yes — the third-card rule is based on a hand's total, which is derived directly from card values. The specific value of a third card drawn by the Player hand also factors into the Banker's drawing decision in certain situations, covered fully in baccarat rules explained.