It’s a Saturday night in the Hard Rock casino and the game is alive with high-rollers, a cocktail waitress pours doubles of 18-year-old Macallan and cigar smoke curls toward the ceiling. Several Chinese guys gab among themselves, cards are kissed and coiled, and thousands of dollars swim from one end of the table to the other. It’s baccarat. This simple card game, with a house edge below blackjack’s, drives more revenue than any other table game in casinos. In fact, in 2017 it generated 88 percent of Macau’s total table-game revenues.
A seated crowd of from seven to 14 players and a banker’s area make up the baccarat table. Once everyone has placed their bets, the dealer deals two cards to the player box and the banker box. Whoever’s hand totals closest to 9 wins. The pips on the cards are worth their respective values: picture cards and tens are worth zero points, while cards numbered from 2-9 count as their face value, and the ace counts as one point.
The game is relatively simple to understand, but many players struggle to master it. Here are six baccarat tips that will help you play the game more successfully.
1) Learn the rules of baccarat.
Baccarat is a card game played between the banker and the player. There are also bets on a tie. The objective is to have your bet on either the player or the banker win by getting a hand with a total close to 9. To accomplish this, you must know how the pips work. A 0 is a win, 9 is a loss, and 10 is a draw.
2) Keep track of your results.
Keeping track of your past hands will help you understand the game better, and adjust your betting strategy accordingly. But this doesn’t mean that your past successes or losses will have any bearing on the outcome of a given hand.
3) Practice good stake management.
Regardless of the game you choose to play, it’s important to manage your bankroll. Keeping your bets low is the best way to avoid a long losing streak, but you should also be willing to increase your bet size when you have a winning streak. A good rule of thumb is to increase your bet by 1 unit after every win and decrease by 1 unit after a loss.
If you’re not sure which bet to place, the player or banker bet is usually the safest bet to make. Both have a lower house edge than the tie bet, but the banker’s edge is higher than the player’s. If you’re a beginner, it’s best to stick with the player bet until you gain more experience. Regardless of which bet you choose, remember that the house edge is only 14.1 percent, and the odds will fluctuate throughout the course of the game. This means that you can expect a high banker edge in some hands and a low player edge in others.