Baccarat is a game with a storied history from Europe that has swept through Asia and recently into American casinos. It is a game that has no skill involved, but is the best-selling table game in casinos, generating more revenue than blackjack and more than any other game in Macau last year. This is largely due to its high-limit action, with some players betting $100,000 per hand or more.
The basic premise of baccarat is that you can bet on either the player or banker hands to win, or a tie. The dealer deals two cards to each of these hands, which are face up so that everyone at the table can see them. The winning hand is the one whose total, when all the pips (the dots on a card that are clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades) are added up, is closest to 9. There are some variations in how a round works but, generally speaking, this is what happens.
A common myth is that a player’s bets on both the player and banker sides cancel each other out. This is not the case, and in fact if a customer makes both a Player and a Banker wager they will be rewarded with Player reinvestment credit if their side wins.
It is also a common myth that the cards are never reused in baccarat. This is untrue, but there was a time when it was standard procedure for customers making bets to handle the dealing shoe and with instruction from the “stick” baccarat dealer draw cards from the shoe. Occasionally, when the cards were blamed for an outcome that was not in their favor, a player would bend or twist the cards and sometimes crumple them to show their displeasure, which was usually followed by a stern reprimand from the stick baccarat dealer.
Today, there is one dealer who handles all the bets and cards for each of the baccarat tables in a casino. The cards are shuffled together before being dealt out to the players in random order around an oval-shaped table. The table is surrounded by a padded rail that keeps the players from getting too close to the dealer and prevents them from accidentally touching the cards.
In the United States, some baccarat players keep score of each hand as it unfolds. They claim that this helps them to track trends and divine patterns. I have spoken with several players who have defended this practice, but basic number-crunching suggests that they are making a bet on hunches and irrational patterns.
The scoreboards are also a form of advertising for the dealers. When a table is hot, the name of that table is printed on the scoreboards. In some casinos, this can be an incentive for players to play at that table. This can be a great way to get noticed by the croupiers and to increase your chances of being dealt in for free hands.