Baccarat: From sticky-floor California card rooms to the tuxedo-laden casinos of Monaco, this high-limit game of choice has seen its popularity rise significantly over the past few decades. The game is played slightly differently than it was when it originated in Italy, but even with the changes, baccarat remains one of the most luxurious gambling games around.
The goal is simple, you bet on either the Player or Banker Hand to win, or on a tie. Cards are dealt from a multi-deck shoe and the winner is whoever has a total closer to nine than the other hand. All of the pips on each card – spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs – count as their value except for face cards and aces which count as one. If your hand is a seven and a three, the first digit will be dropped (so you end up with 9 rather than 18).
While many players can’t articulate their baccarat strategy until after the fact, some do have a clear plan of attack. One such player, a Frenchman we’ll call Francois, has a hunch that he is going to have a great night at the table and proceeds to bet big on Player and Banker. Francois carries a notepad with him to keep track of the winning and losing hands. His rationale is that by keeping score he can see trends and divine patterns, which will allow him to bet smarter and make more money.
Whether or not he is on to something, he is certainly having fun. He’s in a groove and he knows it. He also knows that he’s about to lose a lot of money if he doesn’t buck his trend and change his bets sooner rather than later.
A good rule of thumb for new players is to stay away from the Super Six bet, which pays eight-to-1. It’s one of the worst bets in the game and pays a fraction of what you should expect to win from a banker hand. But countless players still can’t seem to resist this irrational bet.
When management of a casino realizes that the customers are betting based on superstition, they often introduce electronic scoreboards. These show the results of the previous hand and offer two different screen formats to help players track trends. Some scoreboards also display “prediction” screens that advise the customer if the pattern will “streak and repeat” or if it will “chop.” Using these tools, managers can help their customers make more intelligent bets. This also helps reduce the amount of money that is lost due to superstitious decisions. Other measures that have been taken by some casino managers include the use of pre-shuffled decks for baccarat. This allows them to speed up the process of introducing new decks by eliminating the inspection time required when regular, shuffled cards are introduced. This has been particularly beneficial for the large number of Asian high rollers who prefer to play baccarat.