From sticky-floor California card rooms to tuxedo-laden Monaco casinos, baccarat has long enjoyed the reputation of an exclusive pastime for the elite. But on this quiet night at the Hard Rock, Lou discovers that beneath its exotic rituals and Bond-dipped mystique, baccarat has a Zen-like minimalism. In the game, players bet on either the player hand or the banker hand and aim to get closer to nine than their opponent. A hand is scored by adding up the values of its cards, dropping the tens digit and removing any sevens or eights. Picture cards and tens count as zero, while aces are worth one point.
The Player and Banker bets have different house edges, and some players choose to employ a strategy called card counting to help reduce the game’s edge. Essentially, the game’s house edge is increased every time a player wins or loses, and by keeping track of past winnings and losses, baccarat players can use card counting to make bets that minimize their exposure.
But most players just play for fun, and many of them place bets based on how they feel about the croupier. Some believe the croupier has a personal bias and that this reflects in the outcome of each hand. Others prefer to follow the Martingale betting system, which involves doubling bets after each loss in the hope that a win will eventually recoup all previous losses and yield a profit.
Six decks of cards are used in baccarat, and after they’ve been shuffled, the dealer deals two cards to the player box and two to the banker box. If either the player or banker hand has a value of eight or nine (called “naturals”), the hand wins; if both hands have a natural, it’s a tie.
At G2E 2019, AGS introduced a new baccarat table that is capable of tracking player and banker bets in real time to determine whether or not a bet should be changed, while also displaying each player’s account balance. But will the technology take baccarat’s popularity beyond the high-roller enclave of its iconic properties? GGB asked the company’s senior vice president of casino operations, Andrew MacDonald, for his thoughts.