Baccarat Strategy Secret Revealed
Baccarat is the most elegant and prestigious casino game in the world. Its rituals, Bond-dipped mystique, and intricate etiquette are the envy of all luxury brands and high-rollers. But behind the glitz and glamour, there is a simple game that, when played correctly, can yield an edge over the house.
Baccarat involves two opposing hands — the player hand and the banker hand — and the side that totals closest to nine wins. Players place their bets on either the player or the banker hand. The dealer deals each hand two cards, face up and visible to all players. A bet on the player’s hand has a lower house edge but pays out 1:1, while a bet on the banker’s hand requires the casino to pay a 5% commission.
A baccarat banker is a person in the role of a dealer who holds three inter-shuffled decks of cards. They must remain in the position until they wish to withdraw or run out of money to stake. When a new banker wishes to take the position, they must first be seated at the table by another player willing to stake an amount equal to the current banker total. The new banker is then given a set number of cards to begin the next round.
During the 2008 financial crisis, many high-rollers found it harder to afford the luxury of blackjack tables and began to flock to baccarat. Rich gamblers from China flew in, wheeling hockey bags stuffed with tens of thousands of Canadian 20 dollar bills to play the game at private salons inside Vancouver-area casinos. A skilled baccarat player, Francois, developed a remarkably effective strategy that, maddeningly for him and the casinos, he refuses to divulge in detail.
Most baccarat customers aren’t so clueless. They are provided with paper score cards and two-colored pens and use them to track the results of each shoe. They look for patterns in the winning results that appear to “streak” and repeat, or that seem to chop or bounce back and forth between Player and Banker.
The game is also notoriously difficult to cheat at, even for a seasoned card counter. In addition to the basic rules, there are several strategies that can be employed to reduce the house edge – including edge sorting, a technique similar to card counting in blackjack. These methods can help the savvy player gain an advantage of up to 0.05% over the casino. But they do require a certain level of sophistication and can be dangerous to the unwary. Read on to discover the secrets of this elegant game and how to beat it.