Baccarat Roads Explained: Bead Plate, Big Road and Derived Charts

What are Baccarat roads?

Roads are visual scoreboards of completed baccarat hands. Their rows, columns and coloured marks help viewers read table history. They do not predict a future deal. Some live-dealer interfaces use different layouts or legends, so always check the on-screen explanation.

Bead Plate: chronological results

The Bead Plate records each hand in order, often in columns of six. Common colour conventions use red for Banker, blue for Player and green for Tie. It answers the basic question: what happened on the previous hands?

Big Road: winning streaks and changes

The Big Road typically shows Banker and Player wins as hollow red and blue circles. A run of the same result moves downward in one column; a change of winning side begins a new column. Ties are generally annotated rather than starting a fresh Banker or Player column. Long runs can extend sideways along the bottom of the grid, known as a dragon's tail.

Big Eye Boy: the first derived road

The Big Eye Boy is calculated from the shape of the Big Road. It compares how columns and streaks behave. It does not directly label Banker and Player winners: its red and blue symbols indicate regularity or irregularity relative to earlier columns.

Small Road and Cockroach Pig

These two additional derived roads apply similar comparisons at greater distances back in the Big Road. Small Road is often drawn with filled circles; Cockroach Pig uses diagonal slash marks. Their colours likewise describe the geometry of the recorded pattern, not which hand won.

A common misunderstanding

Red on a derived road does not mean 'bet Banker'. Nor does a run of red derived symbols mean a future Banker or Player outcome is predictable. Each derived road transforms information already present on the Big Road.

How to use a scoreboard educationally

Read the Bead Plate to learn the sequence of outcomes, then inspect how streaks appear on the Big Road. Compare the derived charts to understand how the interface summarises that history. Treat any apparent pattern as descriptive, never as a guarantee.

Explore the roads in detail

These illustrated-by-examples follow-up lessons build on the overview above. They explain what each chart records, why similar colours can mean different things, and how to read ties without treating a scoreboard as a forecast.

• Big Road ties and dragon tails — worked examples of tie annotations and why long columns bend across the grid.
• Big Eye Boy colour meanings — how derived red and blue marks compare past column shapes rather than predicting Banker or Player.
• Small Road and Cockroach Pig — how the two derived charts look farther back in the Big Road.

For an explanation of why past streaks cannot determine future outcomes, see our streaks and the gambler’s fallacy guide. Baccarat roads remain descriptive history, not betting signals.

Sources and related lessons

A technical explanation of the standard chart structure is available in the Interblock Baccarat game description filed with the Washington State Gambling Commission. Also read Baccarat rules and card values, third-card rules and the educational video series.

Important: All roads are records of past results. No roadmap, streak or pattern guarantees the next hand. Gambling is age-restricted and may cause financial harm.