Baccarat Strategy

Baccarat is one of the most popular card games, both online and in land-based casinos ⁠— and it’s easy to see why the table game has become a darling of casual and seasoned players alike. With the right baccarat strategy, you can help grow your bankroll, raise your winning odds, and take your gameplay to the next level.

You have seen the game in popular media, especially in James Bond movies, thanks to its glitz and glamour. Because baccarat has a relatively low house advantage and is fairly easy to master, it has become a player favorite across the entire casino spectrum, from the mini-baccarat tables in Macau’s Cotai Strip to the high-limit rooms of Monte Carlo and even online.

As far as the best odds go, baccarat is among the top four casino games, alongside blackjack, Jacks or better (the 9/6 variant), and craps. In a lot of ways, you could say it resembles blackjack, but it is much simpler and more exciting. It’s a rookie-friendly game too.

Although it’s partly a game of chance, baccarat has a few nifty tips, strategies, and hacks you can use to dramatically improve your odds of winning. That’s why we put together this Baccarat strategy guide.

With European appeal and all the glitz and glamour, baccarat can be a little intimidating at first. However, behind the tough exterior, you’ll find a decent card game with only three possible outcomes per hand. In fact, there’s little to no skill required to get started.

Like most table games like Blackjack, baccarat uses three to six standard 52-card decks which are shuffled together and placed in a dealing machine called the ‘shoe.’ Playing the game is as simple as it can get.

Despite what it might sound like, the croupier does all the heavy-lifting, including dealing out the cards from the shoe. All you have to do is place your bet, sit back, and let the fall of the cards decide your fate.

First things first: you have to wager using chips/tokens/checks on the Player hand, Bank hand, or make a tie bet.

The croupier will then deal out two cards to the Player (also known as the Punter), and two cards to the Banker, all of them face up. The goal here is to guess which hand has a count that’s as close to 9 as possible.

●  Cards 2 through 9 carry their face values.

●  Each of the Tens (10s) and Face (also called Court = J, Q, and K) cards has a numerical value equal to zero (0).

●  Every Ace card counts as 1 numerically.

Baccarat Payouts

Player Hand Bets: You win if the Player hand is closer to 9 than the Banker hand. And it pays double or evens (1:1). That is, a winning wager of $20 on the Player hand wins $20, bringing your total payout to $40.

Banker Bets: If you bet on a Bank hand and it wins, you will be paid evens minus 5% house commission. For example, if you bet $20 on the Banker and it wins, you will get $19 in winnings. In this case, $1 will go to the house as a commission.

Tie Bets: When you make a tie bet, you are essentially wagering that the Bank hand and the Player hand will have an equal count. A winning tie bet pays out at 8:1. So, if you bet $20 on a tie and it wins, you will get $160 in winnings as well as retain the original bet of $20.

One thing to note is that all bets placed on the Banker and Player hand will be pushed if the result is a tie, meaning that neither hands loses or wins. You can decide to leave the bet as it is, remove it, switch it, or reduce/add the chips.