Dragon Tiger Baccarat at Hoiana: What Every Side Bet Costs, Computed From the Casino's Own Pay Tables
Hoiana Resort & Golf, the integrated resort near Hoi An in central Vietnam, publishes complete rules and pay tables for two baccarat side-bet games on its own website. We ran every bet through an exact enumeration. The cheapest of them costs almost ten times what the Banker bet costs at the same table.
At a Glance
- Two games, both ordinary baccarat underneath: Dragon Tiger Baccarat and Hoiana Tiger Baccarat, each dealt in a commission and a non-commission version
- Side bets pay from 8 to 1 up to 100 to 1; the computed house edges run from 10.36% on the Pair bets to 16.68% on the Tiger bet, assuming eight decks
- The main bets cost 1.06% (Banker, commission), 1.24% (Player) and 1.46% (Banker, non-commission)
- The name is shared with the two-card game Dragon Tiger, which is a different game; Singapore's regulator published rules for a Dragon Tiger Baccarat at Marina Bay Sands effective December 7, 2023
- Hoiana does not publish the number of decks, the table limits or how many tables deal each variant
What Hoiana Publishes
Hoiana's casino page describes a floor of over 140 tables and more than 200 slot machines, with a separate Sky Casino on Level 19 of Hoiana Hotel & Suites. It lists twelve table games. Four belong to the baccarat family: Baccarat, Dragon Tiger Baccarat, Hoiana Tiger Baccarat and Lucky Three Card Baccarat. The page speaks of classic baccarat alongside "exclusive Hoiana Tiger variations," and the rules pages are offered in English, Vietnamese, Korean and both traditional and simplified Chinese.
What sets the site apart is detail. Each variant has its own page with the bets defined, a full pay table and the complete third-card table of play. Land-based casinos seldom put that in public, and it is what makes the arithmetic below possible.
Underneath, both games are standard punto banco. Four cards are dealt, naturals of 8 and 9 end the hand, the Player draws on 0 to 5 and stands on 6 and 7, and the Banker follows the familiar third-card table. In the commission version Banker pays 0.95 to 1. In the non-commission version Banker pays 1 to 1, except that a Banker win on 6 pays 1 to 2. A tie is a push on Player and Banker.
The Side Bets and What They Pay
Both games carry Tie at 8 to 1, Player Pair and Banker Pair at 11 to 1, Small Tiger at 22 to 1 and Big Tiger at 50 to 1. Hoiana Tiger Baccarat adds a combined Tiger bet that pays 12 to 1 when Banker wins with a two-card 6 and 20 to 1 with a three-card 6. Dragon Tiger Baccarat adds Small Dragon at 15 to 1, Big Dragon at 30 to 1, and a Dragon Tiger bet that wins when Player's 7 beats Banker's 6, paying 30 to 1 if four cards were dealt, 40 to 1 on five and 100 to 1 on six. By Hoiana's rules every side bet loses on any other outcome.
| Bet | Hoiana pays | Wins once in | Fair payout | House edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player Pair or Banker Pair | 11 to 1 | 13.4 hands | 12.39 to 1 | 10.36% |
| Small Dragon (Player wins, two-card 7) | 15 to 1 | 18.4 hands | 17.40 to 1 | 13.05% |
| Small Tiger (Banker wins, two-card 6) | 22 to 1 | 26.8 hands | 25.85 to 1 | 14.33% |
| Tie | 8 to 1 | 10.5 hands | 9.51 to 1 | 14.36% |
| Dragon Tiger (Player 7 beats Banker 6) | 30, 40 or 100 to 1 | 52.7 hands | not a single price | 14.83% |
| Big Tiger (Banker wins, three-card 6) | 50 to 1 | 60.2 hands | 59.18 to 1 | 15.25% |
| Big Dragon (Player wins, three-card 7) | 30 to 1 | 36.6 hands | 35.65 to 1 | 15.41% |
| Tiger (Banker wins with a 6) | 12 or 20 to 1 | 18.6 hands | not a single price | 16.68% |
What the Math Shows
Long odds hide the price. Big Tiger's 50 to 1 looks generous until it is set against the true odds of 59.18 to 1. Small Dragon pays 15 against true odds of 17.40 to 1, and Big Dragon pays 30 against 35.65 to 1. The gap between the two numbers is the house edge, and on these bets it runs from 13.05% to 15.41%.
The combined Tiger bet is the worst buy on either layout. At 16.68% it is dearer than Small Tiger (14.33%) and Big Tiger (15.25%), the two bets that together cover exactly the same result. A player who wants Banker's winning 6 covered gives up less by splitting the stake between the two halves, in any proportion.
The 100 to 1 headline on the Dragon Tiger bet is rare. The bet wins about once in 52.7 hands, and 47% of those wins are four-card hands paying 30 to 1, with 38% paying 40. The six-card result that pays 100 to 1 turns up about once in 368 hands. Taken together the bet costs 14.83%.
Non-commission is not free. Paying half on a winning 6 lifts the Banker edge from 1.06% to 1.46%, about 38% more per unit wagered. Banker wins with a 6 on 5.39% of hands, often enough that the half-pay costs more than the 5% commission it replaces.
A Name Shared With a Different Game
Dragon Tiger Baccarat is not Dragon Tiger. The two-card game, in which one card goes to each side and the higher card wins, is a separate game with a main-bet edge of 3.73% on a half-back table, and it is covered in full by our sister site, DragonTiger.gg. Hoiana's list of twelve table games does not include it. What Hoiana deals under the Dragon and Tiger names is baccarat with two extra families of side bets.
The pattern is not unique to Vietnam. Singapore's Gambling Regulatory Authority published game rules for "Dragon Tiger Baccarat" at Marina Bay Sands with effect from December 7, 2023, defining Big Dragon as a Player win on a three-card 7 and Big Tiger as a Banker win on a three-card 6, the same definitions Hoiana uses. The regulator's index of Marina Bay Sands baccarat rules now lists four games in the family, including no-commission and "Immortal" versions. We did not read Marina Bay Sands' pay table and make no claim about what it pays.
How We Computed It
We enumerated every possible hand from an eight-deck shoe, card by card, under the drawing rules Hoiana publishes, and weighted each outcome by its exact probability. The same engine reproduces the standard figures on our Odds & Payouts page to four decimal places (Banker 1.0579%, Player 1.2351%, Tie 14.3596%), and a separate simulation of three million hands, written independently and dealing real cards, agreed with every probability in the table. With six decks each Dragon and Tiger figure moves by less than 0.1 percentage point. The Pair bets are the exception, rising to 11.25%, because a pair is likelier the more copies of each rank the shoe holds.
Why It Matters for Baccarat Players
The main bets at these tables are the same cheap bets found at any baccarat table: 1.06% on Banker with commission and 1.24% on Player. Every unit moved from there to a side bet costs roughly 10 to 16 times as much. The side bets are entertainment with a known price, and a casino that publishes its pay tables has at least let players work that price out.
Where to Play
Hoiana is a land-based resort and we have no commercial relationship with it. For online baccarat, these are the three casinos we rate highest; we have not checked whether any of them offers these particular side bets. Links are affiliate links; see our full casino comparison for US-player status and terms.
Sources
- Hoiana Resort & Golf: casino page (table count and table-game list)
- Hoiana Resort & Golf: Dragon Tiger Baccarat rules and pay table
- Hoiana Resort & Golf: Hoiana Tiger Baccarat rules and pay table
- Singapore Gambling Regulatory Authority: Dragon Tiger Baccarat (MBS) game rules, effective December 7, 2023
- House edges, probabilities and fair payouts: computed by Baccarat.gg by exact enumeration, eight decks assumed.
Editor's note: Hoiana does not publish the number of decks, so every figure assumes eight. It also publishes no table limits, no count of tables per variant and no launch dates, and we state none. We read the three Hoiana pages on September 20, 2026. Three slips on those pages do not affect the rules: on the Dragon Tiger Baccarat page the Banker's draw table is headed "Player's Hand"; on both pages the "stands" cell for a Banker total of 0 to 2 reads "Draw a third card"; and on the Tiger Baccarat page the non-commission table is captioned "Commission." Singapore's regulator blocks automated access to its documents, so we took the title, effective date and bet definitions of the Marina Bay Sands rules from the regulator's own listing and did not read the full document. We have no commercial relationship with Hoiana. Read how we source our reporting.