Baccarat Strategy

A predominant aspect of the baccarat games played at the local casino is the scorecard. It looks like everyone at the table is keeping track of the outcome on each hand, and that's exactly what they're doing. These people are trying to spot patterns and then change their own betting patterns in order to take advantage of a streak. The casinos encourage this behavior simply because they know it has no bearing on the outcome of the game. Chasing patterns in baccarat is as pointless as it is in roulette.

One hand has no bearing on the next, and is never influenced by the preceding hands. This is a simple trap that gamblers all around the world fall into at one time or another. If you were betting on the flip of a coin, and it landed heads up 9 times in a row, part of your brain will inevitably yell out to you that a tails is imminent, and it's likely that the 10th flip will land tails up. This reasoning is spurious; the chance of the coin landing tails up on the 10th flip is exactly 50%, just as it was the first nine times. Any baccarat strategy that makes you change your bets based on previous hands is useless and should be completely disregarded.

So, although you will see almost everyone around you at the baccarat table marking down numbers on casino provided cards, you should consider it personal entertainment and think nothing more of it. Don't be fooled into participating, it's just another way for the casino to distract you from the important parts of the game-play. Seriously, would Las Vegas casinos provide baccarat players with a pencil and a chart if they were really worth anything?

Another false alley in published baccarat strategy is that of card counting. Card counting is usually associated with the game of blackjack, as it can be quite an effective strategy when utilized properly in the right casino. It would also appear to be a genuinely worthy strategy in baccarat, as it works off of a similar shoe. The problem is of course the issue of used cards being fed back into the shoe before very many have been removed (thus negating any count you had made to that point). In baccarat specifically the problems with card counting are a little different. Unlike blackjack baccarat does not offer opportunities to alter your bet in mid-hand play. Blackjack offers this ability in a number of specific situations, and so you can increase your bet if your count changes during play. Using card counting in baccarat though offers so few situations with an advantage against the house that the overall efforts are worthless.

Baccarat can be considered a coin toss played with a lot of fanfare. Many people let this oversimplified impression of the game lure them towards using a martingale-based system. These styles of systems have you double your bet each time you lose a hand, basing its logic on the fact that eventually your choice will win, and if you had doubled your bet each hand that win will recoup all losses from previous hands. This system is perfect and cannot be beaten in games like baccarat or roulette. Because this is true the casinos have issued new rules, which limit how much one can bet in one hand. Table maximums (and minimums) as they are referred to, eliminate the threat of a martingale system gambler completely. Say you bet 5 dollars on banker and lost, next bet you put 10 bucks down on banker, next bet 20, ect, and you keep loosing, it won't be very long before you double your bet right up to or over the table maximum. In this case of course you can't bet any higher, and your system has failed. If I only accomplish one thing with this web site, I hope it is convincing everyone that martingale systems are absolutely horrific techniques designed to prey on the natural thought patterns of the human brain (the bit that thinks if a coin lands heads up nine times in a row there is a greater than 50% chance it will be tails on the tenth toss).

So if card counting, streak or pattern spotting, and systems are all useless strategy for baccarat, what's a good one? Looking at the numbers it becomes clear that the odds are always a little better when you bet on the banker. Does this mean you should always bet on banker? In a technical sense I suppose yes it does, but practically it would be the most boring use of your time ever if you just sat there betting on banker all night. Pattern chasing is most often some added fun to break the monotony that can come from a simple game.