Baccarat

Introduction 

Baccarat is one of the oldest and most popular casino games worldwide. Also known as punto blanco, this game looks bound and elegant, but in reality is as simple as betting on the flip of a coin. Baccarat is especially popular among Asian gamblers and high rollers, and it is immensely dominant in Macau, Republic of China. 

Format

In baccarat we have three types of tables: 

First, we have Big Table Baccarat, this one is played separate from the other games, in a superior connected area. In this game, minimum bets are often high, and players are commonly well dressed. Each baccarat table usually consists of 12 or 14 players, with 3 casino dealers and the size of the table is comparable to a craps table. Each player, counting the player dealing, Is permitted to still bet on either the player or the banker, but it is traditional for the dealer to bet on the banker.

Just like the dice rotate around in the craps table, the deal goes around the table in baccarat. If a player wants to pass the opportunity to deal, is allowed to do so and she/he can give it to the next player. The same player will keep on dealing, as long as the banker keeps winning. The player dealing lay two cards, two cards, face down placed under the shoe … this person then glances at the cards and hand them back over to the player who is dealing. After this the player who is dealing will turn over the cards. Follow this one the casino dealers will reveal the totals. The dealer may notify the player dealing the cards if a third card is needed, depending on the totals. Lastly the dealer will pay the winning wagers and collect the lost bets out of the dealer’s tray. The person dealing, is just turning over cards and because of this will not be considered financially responsible of the other player’s bets, contrary to pai gow.

Second, we have Mini baccarat, which has the same rules as big table baccarat, the difference lies on the fact that in this table, the dealer is who turns over the cards, this makes the game faster. It assumes the same number of decks and the odds are exactly the same as in big table

And third, we have Midi baccarat. It is the same as mini baccarat, aside from the table size, which is larger and it is traditionally placed in the high-limit rooms, facing the main casino floor. 

Rules

• Traditionally they use a eight decks of cards
• This is how cards are given values Ace = 1, 2-9 = pip value, 10 and face cards = 0.
• The dealer will turn over one card, at the start of a new shoe, and this will dictate how many cards the dealer will burn, except for a 10 or face card which will result in 10 cards burned
• Cut cards are situated 16 cards from the bottom of the shoe. As soon as de cut card appears, that hand will be finished, one more hand will be played, and after this a new shoe will start. If in this case the next card is the cut card, instead of the first card, the dealer will finish this game, and another shoe will start. 
• The hand begins when all players bet either on “player”, “banker”, or a tie. Depending on the table sometimes you can also bet on a player pair and banker pair. 
• The dealer gives two cards to each player and the banker, after all bets are down. The score of the hand is the total digits of each player’s card. For example if you have two cards, one is 8 and the other is 7, together it would be 15 and the score would be 5.  The score will always be in the vicinity between 0-9 and it is impossible to bust.
• Depending on the following rules, a third card might or might not be dealt to either the player or the dealer:

• This rule overrule all other rules: If either the banker or the player has a total of an 8 or a 9 they both stand.
• The player hits, when she/he has a total of 5 or less, if not they stands.
• The banker hits on a total of 5 or less, if the player stands, and if the player does hit, you can use the chart below to decide if the banker Hits ( H ) or Stands ( S ).

Baccarat Drawing Rules

• The winner is the one with the highest score, between the player and the dealer. Winning bets on the player pay 1 to 1, and on the banker pay 19 to 20 (even money less a 5% commission). The winning bets on a tie usually pay 8 to 1. In case of a tie, a banker and player bets will push. 
• On bankers winning bets, the player will be paid even money. In the meantime, the dealer keeps track of the 5% commission owed with small laminated marks. The dealer is allowed to collect owed commissions, at the end of each shoe, or when a player wants to leave the table. 

Odds

Eight Decks

On the return tables below, you can see the possible results of the banker, player, and tie bets for an 8-deck game. As the lower right cells in each table show, the house edge is 1.06% on the banker bet, 1.24% on the player bet, and 14.36% on the tie.

Banker Bet — 8 Decks

Player Bet — 8 Decks

Tie Bet — 8 Decks

Pair Bets — 8 Decks

Six Decks

On the return tables below, you can see the possible results of the banker, player, and tie bets for a 6-deck game. As the lower right cells in each table show, the house edge is 1.06% on the banker bet, 1.24% on the player bet, and 14.44% on the tie.

Banker Bet — 6 Decks

Player Bet — 6 Decks

Tie Bet — 6 Decks

Pair Bets — 6 Decks

One Deck

On the return tables below, you can see the possible results of the banker, player, and tie bets for a single deck game. As the lower right cells in each table show, the house edge is 1.01% on the banker bet, 1.29% on the player bet, and 15.75% on the tie.

Banker Bet — 1 Deck

Player Bet — 1 Deck

Tie Bet — 1 Deck

Pair Bets — 1 Deck

Liberal Banker Rules

The D casino used to have a 4% commission on winning banker bets, but this no longer happens. Back in 1989, the Sahara used to offer a 0% commission, for a short period of time, and the Betfair Internet casino has a 2.75% commission offer in their “Zero Lounge.”

In the table below you can see the expected value on a banker bet depending to the commissions and the number of decks. 

Reduced Commission Baccarat

Liberal Player Rules

On a player’s bet, the 5 Dimes Internet sports book pays the “bonus casino” 1.01 to 1, and the house edge is 1.04%, assuming it’s an eight decks bet.

Liberal Tie Rules

At some casinos the tie is known to be paid 9 to 1. To name some, Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas used to pay 9 to 1, and the Bodog online casino pays 9 to 1. 

8 decks: 4.844%

6 decks: 4.931%

1 deck: 6.385%

On the tie bet, the 5 Dimes Internet sports book pays the “bonus casino” 9.4 to 1, and the house edge is 0.79%, assuming it’s an eight decks bet.

Liberal Pair Rules

An unconfirmed report shows that in in Niagara Falls, the Fallsview Casino pays 12 to 1 on a tie, this would diminish the house edge to 2.89%, and this is based on an eight deck bet. Meanwhile in a six-deck game the house edge would be 3.86%.

Egalite Bets

There are rumors that on specific ties, some casinos in London offer “egalite” bets, by the total of the tie. A 5-5 tie pays 110 to 1, for example. The table below illustrates the reasonable chance and return for each bet, based on eight decks.

Egalite Bets — Eight Decks

Some casinos in the U.K. have some of these Egalite bet groupings

U.K. Egalite Bets Groups — Eight Decks

Riding Trends

Each player on the Baccarat table, will find score cards and pencils so they can keep track of the results of every hand. Many players do systematically and carefully evaluate their cards, looking for a trend, because winning hand switches back and forth from the banker to the player. This might be a waste of time, we recommend to bet on the banker every time and put the scorecards on the side. 

Calculator

With this tool easy tool, you can introduce any distribution of cards and my baccarat calculator will instantly give you the odds for Banker, player and tie bets, decrepit by all potential Banker and Player totals.

Practice Game

You can practice your game with baccarat game for free. It will give you the exact odds for the next hand and give you a full history display. 

Practice Mini-Baccarat for Free

We recommend you to try mini-baccarat Java applet, using this you will get familiar with the game rules and how to play the game. 

Simulations

Using Mersenne Twister, which is a random number generator and a Fisher Yates shuffle, you can test out 250,000 simulated eight-deck shoes before going to the casino. 

Each line in each file is an individual shoe, every file has 25,000 shoes and is 4.06 MB in size. It starts with the shoe number, and followed by the outcome of each hand (P/B/T). To makes it easier for you to loading it into excel, the files are comma delimited.