Baccarat is one of the most revered casino games, often viewed as a game for the affluent. With its low house edge and easy-to-play rules, it’s no wonder that baccarat continues to attract high rollers. But, is the table game’s reputation as a game for the elite keeping it out of the reach of many players?
Originally a European card game, baccarat has attracted VIPs for centuries. In fact, it was a popular pastime of the aristocracy of Europe and is still played in many modern casinos. Besides its popularity with high rollers, it also features prominently in films featuring James Bond. From the 1954 television version of Casino Royal to the more recent movies Dr. No, For Your Eyes Only and GoldenEye, baccarat has long been a staple in the Bond franchise.
In the game of baccarat, the goal is to wager on which hand has the total value closest to nine. Each hand is dealt two cards, and the values of those cards are added together. Picture or face cards are worth zero points, while cards numbered from 2-9 have their face value and the ace is valued at one point. The totals of the banker and player hands are compared, and the hand with the value closest to nine wins.
There are several types of bets available in baccarat, including the Player’s bet, Banker’s bet and Tie bet. The most common bet is the Player’s bet, which pays out 1:1 to the winner. The Banker’s bet has a lower house edge than the Player’s bet, and winning Banker bets pay out 1:1 minus a 5 percent commission.
Baccarat tables are set up with from seven to 14 seats for Players, a Banker box and a shoe. Six decks of cards are used, and each hand is dealt by a dealer. The dealer and each Player have a betting area on the felt table top, with corresponding boxes for the Player’s, Banker’s and Tie bets. A 5% commission is collected on winning Banker’s bets and tracked in a designated spot on the table.
Some players keep track of the results of previous hands, believing that this will help them predict the outcome of future hands. This is a superstition, and basic number-crunching shows that there is no real advantage to tracking past trends in baccarat.
Some players, however, continue to swear by the ritual of calculating their past wins and losses in order to divine patterns that will give them an edge in the next hand. Although this is a superstition, it seems to work for many players. In reality, the odds are ever so slightly in favor of the banker in every single hand of baccarat, and nothing can change that.