Baccarat Lessons

Baccarat (Bah-Caw-Rah) is an Italian reference to "zero". The classy-sounding monicker and allusions to high-style, tuxedoed James Bond types is no coincidence: baccarat is believed to have originated in Italy shortly before the turn of the 16th century, and had been claimed by the French nobility as their favorite game.

Baccarat todays remains hugely popular all over the European casinos. In no time, the game spread and spawned North and South American versions. Cuban baccarat has emerged as the game's most widespread variation, and is what can be likeliest found at the casino tables.

How to Play Baccarat

Baccarat is a table game played with eight decks of cards. The Jokers are not included. The values of the cards are as follows:

10 / Jack / Queen / King = 0 (Zero)
Ace = 1 (One)
2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 = Face Value

The card values in baccarat may seem a bit odd to you at first, especially that 10, J, Q, and K are known to have a value of 10 in most other card games. To spare yourself the confusion, keep this in mind: in baccarat, the first digit in a two-digit number always does not count. Thus, 10, J, Q, and K count as 0 while the Ace counts as one. This rule is applied not only to single cards but also to the total value of two cards combined. If the value of the hand is ten points or more, subtract ten, and the remainder is the total value of your hand.

For example: 7 + 6 = 13 = 3; 4 + 6 = 10 = 0

A game of baccarat begins when the dealer, known as the "banker", shuffles all eight decks together and places them in the dealing shoe, or the container holding the cards, known as the "bank". The banker then takes the top card out of the deck, and the value of this card becomes the number of cards to be "burned" or removed from the game. For example, if the banker draws a top card of 4, then he takes the first four cards from the bank and discards them along with the original top card. The baccarat game proper is now ready to start.

The player and the banker are each dealt two cards. Once all participants have a two-card hand, each one may make any of the following moves in baccarat:

Draw. To "draw" is to add a third card from the shoe to your original two-card hand.

Stand. To "stand" is to leave your two-card hand as is, without taking any additional card.

Natural Win. A "natural win", sometimes simply called a "natural", is not a move but a hand in which your two cards total 8 or 9. You automatically win the game.

Note that when the banker or player must draw, only one card is being drawn. Therefore, the most cards that any banker or player will have are three. The way the game proceeds is that the player with a hand that is closest to 9 wins.

Baccarat Gambling Tips

The best baccarat strategy is an anti-strategy: what not to do when playing the game. Otherwise, your best bet as a baccarat strategy is no doubt smart money management. That is, manage your bankroll in order to maximize your wins and minimize your losses.

The Myth of Pattern Chasing & Pattern Spotting
It is quite hard not to notice the sight of too many scorecards at the baccarat tables. Players hold on to these casino-provided cards for dear life, making marks, tracking the outcomes of hand after hand at the table. They are pattern chasing, also known as pattern spotting. These baccarat players are trying to spot a pattern in the results of each hand and then change their own choice of bet based on what they believe to be a potential winning streak.

But ask yourself: What could possibly cause a randomly shuffled eight decks of cards inside a shoe to suddenly follow a distinct pattern? The quick answer is none. There is neither rhyme nor reason to pattern chasing or spotting in baccarat. One hand has no bearing on the next, and is never influenced by the preceding hands. The so-called "pattern" begins and ends with every played hand. Any game strategy that advises you to change your bets based on previous hands is pointless.

To illustrate, imagine that you were betting on the flip of a coin, and it landed heads up nine times in a row. Some part of your brain would now yell out to you inevitably that a tails is imminent, since too many heads have come out already, and it is likely that the tenth flip would land tails up. This kind of reasoning is spurious. The chance of the coin landing tails up on the tenth flip is exactly 50% (or 1 in 2), just as it had been 50% in the first nine times. That tenth flip of the coin is no more random than the tenth, and the same goes for played hands in baccarat.

The Myth of Card-Counting
Card-counting per se is a perfectly valid betting technique often utilized in multiple-move card games. A good example is blackjack, for which card-counting has long served well in basic strategy. The card-counting method involves keeping track of the cards that have already been played from the shoe in order to gain an advantage against the house. As more cards are played from the shoe, the more you narrow down what cards are left, and the more you can anticipate the cards that you will be dealt. On the outset, it does sound awfully promising, considering that both blackjack and baccarat games operate with cards drawn off of a similar shoe.

Why does card-counting work in blackjack? Because the game allows the player to alter his bet mid-hand, in a move known as "doubling down". A strategy based on mathematical probabilities, card-counting valuably comes into play at this point. Simply put, knowing what cards are left in the shoe, you have a better idea if a card value you need to beat the dealer's hand has not already been discarded.

What of card-counting in a baccarat game? To begin with, baccarat does not allow doubling down. What good is it to know what cards are left in the shoe if you can do nothing in your power to have that knowledge influence the outcome of your hand? For another, used cards are being fed back into the shoe, negating any count you have made up to that point in the game. All in all, card-counting in baccarat is irrelevant.

The Myth of the Martingale Betting System
A popular baccarat strategy that must be avoided unconditionally is the use of the martingale betting system. It advises you to double your bet each time you lose a hand, following the logic that eventually, at some point, your choice of bet will win. And if you had doubled your bet in each hand, that win will recoup all losses from previous hands. On one hand, it is again much like the coin flip logic: the odds of your tenth flip are no lower or higher than your first nine flips, and just because you have lost the first nine flips does not win you will eventually win the tenth flip.

On the other hand, the alarming soundness of the martingale betting system has prompted casinos to issue new betting rules, which limit the amount of bet that a player can place in one hand. Table maximums eliminate any threat from this system completely. Say, if you bet $5 on the banker and lost, then bet $10 next and lost, then $20, and so forth, and you keep losing, you eventually double your bet until you reach the table maximum. At this point, you can no longer bet any higher. Therefore, the martingale betting system will have defeated its purpose to have you wait until that single win whose value can recover all previous losses. It is one of those things that sound really good in theory but fail miserably once applied.

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Baccarat Lessons

How to Play Baccarat

Baccarat Gambling Tips