LARO77 Picture Cards: What Jack, Queen and King Are Worth

Picture cards are the jack, queen and king, which makes 12 of the 52 cards in a deck and 96 of the 416 in an eight-deck shoe. What each is worth depends on the game, and the difference between baccarat, blackjack and Dragon Tiger is the reason a hand can look strong in one and worthless in another. This page is a reference you can keep open next to the live casino tables you play.

Picture cards: how many are in a deck and in a shoe

Each suit has three picture cards, and there are four suits.

1. One deck: 3 picture cards × 4 suits = 12 picture cards.
2. Eight decks: 12 × 8 = 96 picture cards.
3. Cards in one deck: 52. In eight decks: 52 × 8 = 416.
4. Share of picture cards: 12 ÷ 52 = 23.08%, and 96 ÷ 416 = 23.08%.

The share is the same because the shoe is only the deck multiplied. Adding the four tens in each deck gives 16 ten-value cards in 52, or 30.77%.

Card values by game

The table below is a full value table for each game, from the saved rule texts: Pagat’s baccarat and blackjack pages and the Wizard of Odds Dragon Tiger page. A studio can change its own rules, so open your table’s rules screen to confirm.

Dragon Tiger is a ranking, not a total. The saved text ranks cards from ace, the lowest, through king, the highest, and each side has one card, so a king beats a queen and a queen beats a jack.

Card values and what zero and ten do to a hand

In baccarat only the last digit of the total counts. A king and a 7 total 7, and a king and a queen total 0 even though they are the two highest ranks. Sixteen of 52 cards score zero, so the chance that the first card is a zero is 16 ÷ 52 = 30.77%.

Both cards being zero is more likely than you might guess. In one deck it is 16/52 × 15/51 = 240 ÷ 2,652 = 9.05%. In an eight-deck shoe it is 128/416 × 127/415 = 16,256 ÷ 172,640 = 9.42%, which is why many baccarat hands start at 0 and need a draw.

Blackjack goes the other way, because sixteen cards worth ten make strong hands common. The first two cards are a ten-value card plus an ace for a natural at 2 × (4/52 × 16/51) = 128 ÷ 2,652 = 4.83% in a single deck (a worked example, with the working shown). Two ten-value cards, a total of 20, come up at the same 9.05% as two zeros in baccarat. How an ace flexes between 1 and 11 is the subject of what makes a soft hand in blackjack.

The same twelve cards decide the Dragon Tiger rank, so a jack can never beat a queen. They also anchor card games where the picture cards themselves are the scoring, such as the three pictures card game, which asks how often three of them are dealt together.

No value table changes the house edge of any bet, which comes from the paytable and the rules. The house edge meaning explained shows how that edge accumulates across turnover, and your table’s own rules screen is the final word on both values and payouts.