Baccarat has quickly become the go-to game for high rollers worldwide since Sean Connery popularised it in James Bond’s 1963 debut film. While its reputation among high rollers may give it an air of sophistication that distinguishes it from other casino floor games, its house edge remains low enough that anyone with basic strategy can beat this game!
Baccarat (pronounced: baek@raet) is a card game with three possible outcomes for each coup: Player wins, banker wins or tie. It requires six decks of cards shuffled together that players sit around an oval table with at random order before dealing one card to each of the player and banker boxes by an appointed dealer; winner determined by hand totalling closest to nine; tens, queens and kings count as zero while all other suits of cards value differently according to suit value calculations.
Once both hands have been distributed, players may wager either on the player or banker hand – wins on player hands typically pay out 8-1 and 9-1 for wins on banker hands respectively. A third bet may also be available, with an eight-1 pay out but a higher house edge than either option; most serious players generally opt for these first two options instead.
Few players have found ways to overcome the house edge. Card counting and edge sorting both offer viable methods for doing this, with edge sorting further diminishing their advantage by 0.5%. Both strategies, however, require significant practice before yielding any meaningful results.
Players can employ the Fibonacci betting system. This involves increasing each bet after losing and then decreasing it back when winning; should this pattern continue, player money will gradually return to its initial amount within several rounds.
History of BaccaratBaccarat can be traced back more than 500 years, to medieval Italy where nobility and aristocrats played it for recreational purposes. Since then it has spread to Middle East and South America before finally becoming one of Europe and Asia’s most beloved table games.
Smaller operators without deep pockets may find tables requiring minimums in the thousands unprofitable, which has led some companies to offer premium baccarat tables with lower tables and higher minimums as an attempt to stay profitable. Unfortunately, this approach may only serve to drain profits quickly before leading to losses and withdrawals; additionally, premium segments skew customer bases out of balance; therefore it’s crucial that each operator carefully consider their financial situation and tolerance for risk before investing in this form of gambling.