Baccarat Roadmap Patterns: Dragon, Ping-Pong and Double Explained

Key takeaways

• The three most common pattern names are the dragon (a long streak), ping-pong (results alternate) and double (results come in pairs).
• Each pattern has a clear shape on the Big Road, so you can recognise it at a glance.
• When a pattern keeps repeating, the derived roads tend to show red. When it breaks, they show blue.
• Patterns describe what already happened. They appear naturally in random results and never make the next result more likely.

Why patterns have names

The Big Road turns a list of results into shapes: columns that grow, columns that stay short, and columns of the same length. Players gave the most common shapes names so they can describe a table quickly. If you're new to the Big Road, start with our complete roadmap guide.

In the examples below, B = Banker and P = Player. Each column is one streak.

Dragon: a long streak

The same result appears many times in a row, so one column grows long.

Row	C1	C2
1	B	P
2	B
3	B
4	B
5	B

If a streak goes past the 6th row, it turns right along the bottom row. This is called the dragon tail.

Ping-pong: results alternate

Banker and Player take turns, so every column has just one result.

Row	C1	C2	C3	C4	C5	C6
1	B	P	B	P	B	P

Double: results come in pairs

Two Banker, two Player, two Banker and so on, so every column has two results.

Row	C1	C2	C3	C4
1	B	P	B	P
2	B	P	B	P

How patterns look on the derived roads

The Big Eye Boy, Small Road and Cockroach Pig don't show Banker or Player. They show whether the Big Road is repeating its shape (red) or changing it (blue).

• Ping-pong: every column has the same length (1), so new columns keep matching. The derived roads turn mostly red.
• Double: every column has the same length (2), so the derived roads also turn mostly red.
• Dragon: while the streak continues, the derived roads usually stay red. When the streak ends, a blue mark often appears.

See how each derived road is calculated, step by step, in our Big Eye Boy guide.

Why patterns appear in random results

Random results naturally contain streaks and alternations. Over a full shoe, a run of five or more of the same result is common, and so are stretches of ping-pong. That is why almost every scoreboard shows at least one recognisable pattern.

A pattern tells you what happened, not what comes next. Each hand follows the same fixed drawing rules, explained in our baccarat rules guide. Believing a streak must end or continue is the gambler's fallacy. Read more in Is There a Baccarat Winning Strategy?

Study patterns on LabxPlay

On LabxPlay you can follow live Evolution tables and use Pattern Search to find tables currently showing a pattern you want to study, such as a long dragon or a ping-pong run. Practise reading them with virtual points. Read more in our FAQ.