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How To Play Baccarat For Beginners

how to play baccarat for beginners

In this article about how to play baccarat for beginners, we are discussing strategies for land casinos, playing video baccarat online and on the go, plus playing at live dealer casinos. We hope that you can discover helpful hints for beginners and advanced players to learn to gain the advantage and how to play baccarat with our betting strategies, tips, and tricks.

Made famous as James Bond’s game of choice, baccarat is one of the world’s most popular casino table games. It has a reputation in the West as a sophisticated and glamorous game, which can sometimes intimidate new players, but it’s really very simple. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say it’s basically a coin flip, at least at most tables.

In the variant seen most commonly at live casinos, each player betting on the game picks either the current player (the one who has placed the largest wager) or the banker to have the better hand. That’s basically all there is to it. The winner is simply the one who has a total hand value that is closest to nine when the values of the cards are added together.

Baccarat: How To Play, And How To Gain An Advantage

The only thing that complicates ‘how to play baccarat for beginners’ is that it uses a card value system that is unusual. The face value of the dealt cards are added together, but unlike other games, the “face cards” (such as the jack and queen) are not advantageous as they have no value, nor does the 10. The only face card to have a value in baccarat is the ace, which is worth one point.

The customs of play are also slightly unusual at some tables in that players take turns acting as the live dealer, which means they deal themselves a hand that actually represents the casino. However, though the dealer is acting on behalf of the casino in these situations, they are not responsible for paying out anyone else’s wagers and are free to bet against the casino. The casino has a representative who sits at the table and handles wagers.

Live Dealer Baccarat Rules And Customs

Up to 14 people can play at any given time at most live baccarat tables. Unless a casino dealer is handling each hand, the deal rotates between players, but no one is obligated to deal if they do not want to; they can simply pass the shoe to the next person. The current dealer is the “banker” for the purposes of the game in these situations, though as mentioned earlier, they have no stake in the wagers of the casino or other players.

Players place their bets before the deal, and the player who bets the most has two cards dealt with them. They will compete with the cards that the banker holds. In addition to betting on one of these two to win, players can bet on a “push,” or that the player and dealer will end up with the same total. If players are dealing, the deal stays with the current dealer until they lose a hand, and then it is passed on.

If the player has an eight or nine total value dealt in the first two cards, this is a “natural” and they automatically win. If they have six or seven, they are required to stand. They automatically get a third card if their value is five or less. The value of the combined cards “wraps around” when it hits double digits, so to speak, so for example, if the current total value is 5 and a 9 is drawn, the total value would then become 4.

How To Play Baccarat For Beginners With Side Bets

Some tables have added side bets to spice the game up (and increase its profitability). The two most common are called Dragon and Panda. A Dragon bet means choosing the specific winning total along with which side will win, and a Panda bet pays a bonus if the winning side takes three cards and wins with a specific amount (sometimes specifically an eight).

Live Dealer Baccarat Strategy

There really is no strategy to how to play baccarat for beginners; the outcome is entirely in the luck of the draw. The smartest bet is on the banker (dealer) on any given hand, however, as they have a slightly higher probability of winning. Why is that? As in real money blackjack, it is because the banker gets to act last. The banker stands on a value of seven to nine. With less than that, however, what they do depends on the final hand the player winds up with. The rules that govern how they draw are optimized to give them the best chance of winning in that situation. Therefore, bankers win over players by a small margin, usually less than a full percentage point.

If it were this simple, however, players would quickly bankrupt casinos by doing nothing but betting the banker every time. So, in order to retain their omnipresent advantage, the casino takes a commission on winning banker bets; the industry standard is 5%. This amount more than covers whatever the expected advantage is on banker bets and thus makes the casino money consistently over time.

Even with the commission, the best bet is still on the banker, but the difference in odds becomes so close it is almost a coin flip at most tables. Since pushes and side bet wins are much more rare, betting on these pushes the house edge up into the double digits in all cases. This also only applies to those looking to win money. Casinos will often reduce or even eliminate comp points for banker bets (though if they entirely eliminate comps they will often also remove the 5% commission on these bets). Restricting comps in this way dissuade teams of people from betting each side on every hand and then splitting the comp haul after breaking relatively even.

Players can gain an advantage at live dealer baccarat in a number of ways that are considered “advantage play” by the house, and potentially can get one asked to leave the premises if they are noticed. The classic means is to notice a small discrepancy in decks of cards, such as nicks or printing abnormalities, that clue the player in to their value before they are turned over. These situations are extremely rare, however, and when they happen there is often a dealer working in collusion with outside parties. Some players also engage in card counting based on the placement of the “cut card” (which signals the dealer to cut the deck), which becomes easier to do the less deeply it is placed in the deck.

The Final Word For Players

Baccarat is unusual among casino games in that it has a built-in bet that is always favorable to the player, but the advantage is so slim that players should not expect to consistently win money with it due to variance. The appeal of live baccarat is more in the social aspect, with a large group of people gathered around the table interacting and the ability to play for long periods without losing large amounts of money and without having to constantly focus on strategy and the actions of other players.

 

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