Proven Baccarat Tips and Strategies That Can Be Used at Online Casinos
Baccarat is a table game that, in our opinion, simply doesn't get enough love. Oh but at least it's getting its own movie, a la The Baccarat Queen.
What is Baccarat?
Baccarat is a table game whereby you are attempting to determine whether your hand or the dealer's hand contains the highest number of points. Like with Blackjack, where the object is not to go over the number 21, in the case of Baccarat that number would be 9. You want to get as close to that number as possible.
You can bet on the Player, banker or Tie.
Some Useful Rules
It is important to understand the basics before playing online Baccarat for real money.
Here are some rules to know:
- When either the player or banker is dealt a total of eight or nine, both the player and banker stand.
- The player receives another card when his or her total equals 5 or less. Anything higher, the player will stand.
- When the player stands, the banker hits on a total of 5 or less.
- A tie pays out 8-to-1.
- Sheets are commonly kept at a Baccarat table in order to keep track of calculations, so do have your own sheet next to your laptop computer or smartphone.
Baccarat is Considered a High Stakes Game Beloved By the Wealthy
"The Baccarat Queen" film is currently in development and is based on a true story of one Phil Ivey, among poker's most successful players and biggest money earners. Ivey ventures into various casinos with his female acquaintance and gets accused of counting cards by noticing flaws within the deck. At least two casinos refused to pay him his winnings.
What stands out here more than the accusations lodged against Ivey is that we have one of poker's winningest players choosing Baccarat as his game of choice. One can surmise it's an even more lucrative game than poker, maybe.
Some Hot Baccarat Strategies
D'Alembert is a solid strategy for baccarat that resembles Martingale but is considered to be less aggressive.
Simply put, the D'Alembert system calls for bettors who lost on the previous coin toss to stick with their choice of heads while increasing the size of their bets
The concept is named after the French mathematician Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert.
The Martingale system can be traced back to Paul Lévy in 1934.
With D'Alembert, you will be setting a base betting limit (maybe $2) and that is your wager unit as well. In this example, each time you lose you increase your bet by 1 unit (or $2 in this case). Also, each time you win, you decrease your bet by 1 unit. With Martingale, you typically reduce your bet by half following a win.
In theory, at least, more time is spent at the table by sticking with the D'Alembert system. There is also less in the way of volatility.
A Few More Fun Facts
- The average payout percentage for baccarat is around 98%, giving the player fairly decent odds against the house with an edge of 2%.
- The bets with the highest odds of winning are on the banker, delivering a 98.94% Return to Player (RTP), followed by the player at 98.76% RTP.
- Online casinos are known to have payout percentages similar to, if not slightly higher, than your average land-based or retail casino establishment.
- B.E. Delmer, Gambling911.com
