Guide · Updated July 2026
A side bet is an optional, additional wager you can place alongside your main bet at a blackjack, baccarat, or occasionally poker-based table game, that pays out based on a completely separate set of conditions from the main hand. You'll see the side bet betting spot marked clearly on the table layout — usually a smaller circle or box positioned just above or beside your main betting circle — and at both live dealer tables and RNG-based digital tables, placing a chip there is entirely your choice. Nothing about the main game requires you to bet on it, and skipping it entirely doesn't affect your ability to play blackjack, baccarat or any other table game normally.
The appeal is obvious the moment you see the paytable: side bets typically advertise payouts far larger than anything the main game offers, sometimes running as high as 25:1, 30:1 or more for a rare combination. A Perfect Pairs bet that lands on a same-suit pair, for instance, can pay out at odds most main-game blackjack hands could never approach, even with a natural blackjack's standard 3:2. That's precisely the hook — side bets are built around low-probability, high-payout events, the same basic structure that makes jackpot slots and lottery-style games appealing. The catch, which this guide covers in detail, is that the odds baked into those payouts are considerably less generous to the player than the main game's own odds.
Side bets are resolved independently of your main hand. You can win your side bet and lose your main hand, lose your side bet and win your main hand, or any other combination — the two are unrelated wagers happening at the same table, settled by different rules, at the same moment. This is an important distinction from something like a blackjack insurance bet, which is directly tied to whether the dealer's face-down card is a ten-value card. Side bets like Perfect Pairs and 21+3 don't care what the dealer ends up with at all; they resolve purely based on the cards dealt to you (and sometimes one dealer up-card) at the start of the hand.
Blackjack's most common side bet
Like all side bets, this is placed in its own betting spot before the hand begins — you can't add it once cards are on the table.
Perfect Pairs pays based purely on your own first two cards forming a pair — the dealer's cards and the rest of the hand don't factor in.
Most Perfect Pairs paytables split into three tiers: a "mixed pair" (same rank, different colour, e.g. a red 8 and a black 8) pays the lowest odds; a "coloured pair" (same rank, same colour, different suit, e.g. two black 8s from different suits) pays higher; and a "perfect pair" (identical rank and suit — effectively the same card twice, possible because most tables use 6-8 decks) pays the highest, often 25:1 or more.
The side bet resolves the moment your first two cards are revealed — you don't need to wait for the rest of the hand to play out to know if Perfect Pairs won.
Whatever happens with Perfect Pairs, your main blackjack hand continues exactly as it would without the side bet — hit, stand, double or split based on the same basic strategy you'd use anyway.
Exact paytables and tier names vary by software provider and table, so always check the paytable displayed on the specific table you're playing before assuming odds match a different table you've played before.
The other blackjack classic
Again, this is placed before the deal, in its own designated spot on the table layout.
21+3 takes your two starting cards plus the dealer's single visible up-card and evaluates all three together as if they were a three-card poker hand.
The paytable rewards those three cards forming a flush (same suit), a straight (consecutive ranks), three of a kind (matching rank), or the rarest and highest-paying combination, a straight flush — sometimes split further into a suited three-of-a-kind on some tables.
A flush pays the least of the four common outcomes, a straight slightly more, three of a kind more again, and a straight flush the most — often 30:1 or higher depending on the table's specific paytable.
The 21+3 outcome is locked in as soon as the dealer's up-card is revealed, well before you make any hit/stand/double decisions on your own hand.
Because 21+3 uses the dealer's up-card, it's one of the few side bets where a card outside your own hand directly affects your side bet's outcome — worth remembering if you're tracking which cards have appeared at a shared live table.
Baccarat tables, particularly live dealer baccarat, tend to carry an even wider menu of side bets than blackjack, since the base game itself offers only three outcomes (Player, Banker, Tie) and operators use side bets to add variety and higher-payout options for players who want them. The two most universal are Player Pair and Banker Pair, which simply pay out if the Player's or Banker's first two cards, respectively, form a pair of matching rank — a straightforward bet to understand and one of the more commonly offered side wagers across both live and RNG baccarat tables.
Beyond pairs, many baccarat tables offer a Big/Small bet (wagering on whether the hand resolves using four, five or six total cards dealt), a Perfect Pair bet (a rarer, higher-paying version requiring the pair to match in suit as well as rank), and Dragon Bonus-style bets that pay escalating odds based on how large a margin the Player or Banker hand wins by, with the biggest payouts reserved for a big win by natural (undrawn) cards. Some tables also run a standalone Tie side bet that mirrors baccarat's main Tie outcome but is sometimes listed and priced separately from the main game's own Tie option, so it's worth checking whether "Tie" is already built into the main bet spread on a given table or offered as an extra.
What all of these baccarat side bets share is the same underlying structure as blackjack's side bets: low-probability outcomes, high advertised payouts, and — as the next section covers — a house edge that runs meaningfully higher than baccarat's already well-known Banker or Player bets. If you're new to baccarat generally, our how to play baccarat online guide covers the main game and its standard odds before you consider layering side bets on top.
Mzansi Pro-Tip
The house edge gap between side bets and the main game is the single most important thing to understand before you place one. Blackjack played with correct basic strategy typically carries a house edge of around 0.5%, meaning for every R100 wagered over the long run, the house's mathematical advantage costs you roughly 50 cents. A typical Perfect Pairs or 21+3 side bet, by contrast, commonly carries a house edge somewhere between 4% and 11% or more depending on the specific paytable — often eight to twenty times steeper than the main hand you're playing right next to it.
That doesn't make side bets "wrong" to play — plenty of players enjoy them purely for the occasional big hit and the extra thrill they add to a session, and that's a perfectly reasonable way to spend entertainment budget. What matters is treating them as exactly that: a higher-variance, higher-house-edge add-on, not a core part of a bankroll strategy. If you're playing blackjack or baccarat specifically because you value the comparatively low house edge of the main game, stacking a high-edge side bet on every hand quietly erodes that advantage. Our house edge guide covers how this concept applies across every game type on the site, and our bankroll management guide covers how to budget for optional extras like side bets without letting them dominate your session.
The mathematics behind this gap comes down to volatility and how casinos price rare events. A side bet like Perfect Pairs has to pay out at odds that look enormous — 25:1 for a genuine "perfect" pair, for example — precisely because that specific outcome is genuinely rare given the number of decks in play and the total possible card combinations. But the true odds of that event happening are calculated precisely by the game's mathematicians, and the payout offered is always set below the true fair odds, which is exactly where the house edge comes from on any bet, side or main.
What makes side bets different from, say, a standard blackjack hand isn't that this pricing logic is somehow unfair or hidden — it's published in the paytable for anyone who wants to check — it's that the gap between the true odds and the offered payout tends to be proportionally larger on side bets than on core table game outcomes. Main game bets like blackjack's basic hit/stand/double decisions, or baccarat's Banker/Player bets, have been priced tightly by decades of competitive game design, keeping the house edge as low as roughly 0.5%–1.5% to keep players engaged in extended sessions. Side bets, precisely because they're optional add-ons rather than the core product, don't face the same competitive pressure to keep the edge razor-thin — operators and game studios can price them more generously to the house because players are opting in for the entertainment value and big-number appeal, not comparing side bet house edges across ten different tables the way they might compare a casino's core RTP.
This same basic pattern shows up across the wider casino landscape too. Progressive jackpot slots, lottery-style instant win games, and bonus buy features on slots all trade a lower baseline return for a shot at a large, rare payout — see our progressive jackpots guide and bonus buy slots explained guide for how the same trade-off plays out in a different game format. Side bets are simply the table-game version of that same principle: pay a little more house edge for a shot at a much bigger multiplier than the main game offers.
There's no universally "correct" answer here — it depends entirely on what you're optimising for in a given session. If your priority is stretching a fixed bankroll across the longest possible playing time with the smallest realistic swings, side bets work against that goal, since their higher variance means bigger, faster swings in either direction compared to sticking purely to the main game. In that case, skipping side bets entirely and playing standard blackjack or baccarat with correct strategy or standard betting is the mathematically tighter approach.
If, on the other hand, you're playing primarily for entertainment and the occasional big multiplier is part of what makes a session fun for you, a small, fixed side bet stake — say, 10-20% of your main bet, kept consistent hand after hand rather than increased when you're chasing a loss — is a reasonable way to add that variety without letting it dominate your bankroll. The key discipline is deciding on that side bet budget before you sit down, not adjusting it emotionally mid-session based on whether Perfect Pairs has hit recently. Side bets, like all casino games, have no memory: a Perfect Pairs bet that hasn't landed in the last twenty hands is no more or less likely to land on hand twenty-one, since each deal is an independent event.
It's also worth checking, before you commit to a table long-term, whether the specific side bet paytable on that table is a generous or stingy version — the same side bet name (Perfect Pairs, 21+3) can carry meaningfully different payout tiers and house edges from one software provider or table to the next. Our casino game providers explained guide covers how different studios build out their table game libraries, including side bet variations, if you want to compare options across operators like Pantherbet, 10bet and Hollywoodbets before settling on a regular table.
Side bets show up at both RNG-based (computer-dealt) and live dealer versions of blackjack and baccarat, though live dealer tables tend to offer a wider and more consistent menu of side bets since they're built around a small number of well-established studio formats used across many operators. All three casinos this site tracks — Pantherbet, 10bet and Hollywoodbets — carry blackjack and baccarat tables with side bet options as standard, though the exact paytables and specific side bets on offer vary by table and software provider, so it's always worth checking the paytable button on the table itself before assuming odds match what's described generically in this guide.
If you're new to live dealer tables generally and want the fuller picture of how streaming, dealers and real-time betting windows work before adding side bets into the mix, our live dealer games guide and live dealer streaming guide both cover the mechanics in more depth. For the core game rules that side bets sit alongside, see our blackjack guide and baccarat guide. And for the full comparison of where these games are available, visit our live dealer casinos page or browse the full guides hub for more table game breakdowns.
Before you bet
A side bet is an optional additional wager placed alongside your main bet, resolved by its own separate set of conditions — such as your first two cards forming a pair — rather than by the outcome of the main hand.
Perfect Pairs carries a noticeably higher house edge than standard blackjack played with basic strategy — often in the 4%–11%+ range versus roughly 0.5% for the main game. It can be fun for the occasional big payout, but it's not a mathematically favourable core strategy.
No. Side bets are resolved completely independently of your main hand's outcome. Placing or skipping a side bet has no mathematical effect on your main bet's odds of winning.
Payouts vary by table and software provider, but a straight flush is typically the highest-paying 21+3 outcome, often 30:1 or higher. Always check the specific paytable displayed on the table you're playing rather than assuming a fixed number.
Yes — side bets appear on the same table layout regardless of whether you're playing on desktop, mobile browser, or a casino's dedicated app, since the underlying game and paytable don't change based on device.
No — side bets are add-ons to a hand you're already playing, so a main bet is required first. You can't wager on Perfect Pairs or 21+3 in isolation without also playing the underlying blackjack hand.
Table games, including side bets, often contribute a lower percentage toward wagering requirements than slots — sometimes 10% or less, or occasionally 0%. Always check the specific bonus terms at your operator before relying on side bets to clear wagering. See our wagering requirements guide for the full mechanic.
Side bets price rare, high-multiplier outcomes below their true statistical odds, the same way any casino bet generates a house edge — but because side bets aren't the core product players compare across operators, that pricing gap tends to be wider than on tightly competitive main-game bets.
Pantherbet, 10bet and Hollywoodbets all carry blackjack tables with side bet options as part of their table game libraries, though the exact side bets and paytables available depend on the specific table and software provider.