Baccarat Strategy

A reliable baccarat strategy is generally considered a falsehood among gamblers. Although you may often hear people asserting that they have devised the `perfect` strategy, Baccarat is essentially a game of chance and there is relatively little the player can do strategically to improve the odds.

Gamblers generally agree that Baccarat is a game of pure chance and that there is no viable strategy. Any strategy that claims to be foolproof is probably full of flaws and unreliable information. However Baccarat does offer a few basic strategic moves that can be used to improve the chances of winning.

All casinos offer Baccarat players a scorecard. The baccarat table looks as though all the players are busy keeping track of the result of every hand. That is exactly what they are doing. They are searching for patterns that will warn them to change their own betting strategies so that they can take advantage of a winning streak. The casinos, of course, encourage this score-keeping because they know that it has no effect on how the games will come out. Trying to find patterns in Baccarat is about as effective and successful as it is in roulette. Every hand is unique and has no influence on any other hand. All gamblers, no matter where they come from, eventually fall into this trap.

If a coin that you are flipping and betting on comes up heads nine times in a row, something in your brain tries hard to convince you that the next flip will be a tails flip, and this is highly probable. But it is also false thinking since the chance of a tail coming up on the tenth flip is the same as it was on all the other nine times - 50%. If you change your betting strategy when playing Baccarat you are being misled. Such thinking should be avoided and not used.

The handing out of scorecards by the casino is just a ploy to distract you from the more important aspects of the game that may really require your attention. The casinos of Las Vegas would not provide these materials if they were of any value to you in your taking their money! So when you see gamblers sitting and feverishly marking the results of each hand on their cards, you are watching a form of entertainment and nothing more.

Let me make one thing crystal clear right from the very start. If you are looking for a game where a combination of betting and playing systems can be used by a skilful player to consistently beat the house over a period of time, then baccarat is probably not the game for you. That is not to say that there are no smart moves to make within the game that can increase your chances of winning (such as betting on the "banker" hand), but as far as playing systems are concerned, they are a waste of time in this game. Now we have got that seemingly unpleasant fact out of the way, we can look at why this is so, and what is the best way to play and enjoy the game.

Baccarat is not like blackjack, where events that happen during a hand influence the odds that face the player later during that hand and the next hand. In baccarat, the odds in every hand are determined by pure chance, just like rolling a die. The sad fact is that in every single hand of baccarat played, a player has the best chance of winning by betting the "banker" bet. This would over time become extremely boring, as well as unprofitable. Baccarat is a game where you should indulge your whims and try to ride your luck in a magical way. There is no guarantee of winning of course, but you are ironically more likely to walk away from the table with a nice pile of winnings by doing this than you are by following any other strategy.

There is one system that works perfectly in theory in baccarat. Here a player just doubles their bet after every hand that they lose, so that when they eventually win they recoup all their previous losses. The problem is that the casinos know that this works and that if it is allowed most players would do it, even though you need pretty strong nerves to carry it through, for example, ten consecutive losing hands! So every casino imposes a maximum bet, which creates a ceiling at which this system's bubble inevitably bursts sooner or later.

Pattern spotting is a fake system that players who do not understand mathematics try to use in vain. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops: just because a coin lands on heads four times in a row, does not alter the mathematical fact that the probability of it landing on either heads or tails on the fifth throw is exactly the same as it was on the first throw…. fifty-fifty!

As for card counting, a few books have been published by authors claiming that a card counting strategy can be used profitably in baccarat. However the great card counting gurus of blackjack, Peter Griffin and Edward Thorp, investigated the game of baccarat and came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to earn more than seven cents in a day by counting cards at a baccarat table. Most analysts today still agree with their conclusions. So relax, place your bets, and enjoy yourself!