The Pitfalls of Baccarat
Baccarat is an elegant casino game played from sticky-floor California card rooms to the elegant casinos of Monaco, yet its playing requires great courage; not for those afraid of high stakes games or faint of heart! Players bet blindly either Banker or Player to see which will win; yet even experienced gamblers can fall prey to its traps, and more than winning big needs to be considered when considering Baccarat as an investment vehicle.
At a baccarat table, there are anywhere from seven to 14 seats available for players and a dealer area. When dealing out cards for both the Player’s and Banker’s hands, the objective is to reach nine as quickly as possible before their opponents do; picture cards and Tens count for zero points while face values (two through nine) count their face value while an Ace counts as one point; banker and Player bets respectively pay back nine to one and eight to one, however any third bet placed on a tie has an even higher house edge!
Not every baccarat table uses scorecards where customers can track results; these tend to be inaccurate and require too much attention from players. Instead, many modern tables include electronic displays that display results and trends from previous shoes in a variety of ways – Bread Pan and Big Road screens show results and trends while Roads provide prediction charts using colourful symbols arranged in a square grid with six symbol heights and an unlimited width width.
Customers using score cards with winning patterns can consult charts that inform them if their patterns indicate winning outcomes will “streak” and repeat, or whether their outcomes may shift back and forth between Players, Bankers, and Ties. Some baccarat dealers also display a bead plate – or cube tray – which has six rows of colored symbols which indicate current trends of play on a shoe.
Zender highlights a key drawback of baccarat: its high house advantage on Banker and Player bets (over 14 percent!). A third tie bet exists but rarely seen as worth wagering on.
But despite these disadvantages, baccarat remains popular both in Asia and among some of casino’s biggest whales, like Kerry Packer who once bet an estimated $20 million during a single session at Caesars Palace in 2000. Even though Packer’s mega-wagers temporarily reduced table revenue for most Las Vegas Strip operators who still keep it on their rosters.
