Baccarat Bankroll Management

The strategy for most casino baccarat games is pretty simple: bet on the banker hand to win, only bet on the player to win when you’re really bored, and avoid tie bets like a disease. For more baccarat tips, check this out. Seeing as how baccarat strategy is pretty easy, many people take this as an invitation to skip out on general gambling strategy such as bankroll management. But as you’ll find out, managing your baccarat bankroll is just as important as anything in the casino game!

In order to come up with a plan for properly managing your baccarat roll, it’s best to start with the basics, which include knowing the house edge and your general bet size. The house edge is pretty easy to understand because the casino has a 1.06% advantage on banker bets (assuming you play 6 or 8 deck baccarat). So if you were to bet on the banker every time, you can always count on facing a 1.06% long-term house edge.

As for your average bet size, this simply takes into consideration how much you normally bet on each hand. So if you always bet $10 on each hand, then your bet size is going to be $10; if you bet $5 a hand and $10 a hand an equal amount of times, then your average wager is going to be $7.50. Obviously players aren’t going to know exactly how many times they make a $5 or $10 casino bet, so this is only a guestimation.

Once you have a good idea about these numbers, you can multiply them to determine the average cost that you’ll be spending on each hand. So taking the aforementioned $7.50 example, you would be spending close to $0.08 per hand ($7.50 X 0.0106). The final piece of the puzzle to a solid bankroll management plan is finding out how many hands you expect to play. And this is a totally new topic…

The best way to find out how many estimated hands you’ll be playing is to come up with a hands per hour figure, then guess how many hours you will play. Beginning with the first part, hands per hour is much like your average bet size in that there is no definitive number available. In fact, there are a lot of factors that go into figuring out hands per hour such as whether you are playing in a land-based casino or online, how many players are at the table (land-based) and how quickly you play hands (online).

The best way to determine this is to track hands for a few hours so you can find an average number. However, you can also use generic numbers, even though this won’t produce as accurate of results. In any case, the average land-based casino deals around 50-60 hands an hour, while the average online player plays 150-300 hands per hour.

To illustrate how this factors into your bankroll management strategy, let’s just assume that you normally play 150 hands per hour in online baccarat. Using our number from before where your average hand cost is $0.08, you would be spending $12 an hour to play online baccarat (150 hands X $0.08). Taking this a step further, let’s assume you want your bankroll to stretch at least 10 hours. This being the case, you would need $120 on average to play the entire 10 hours.

Of course, you also have to factor in a number of other things such as the variance associated with casino-style baccarat. After all, there will be times where you lose seven or eight hands in a row, which will put a severe dent in a $120 bankroll (unless you’re making $1 bets). So to be on the safe side, it’s a good idea to have a roll worth 2-3 times the $120 figure.

While having a nice, neat casino bankroll management plan is great, there is also an emotional side to baccarat as well. Far too many players have walked up to the baccarat tables with an excellent plan, only to end up losing the shirt off their back later on. Likewise, those who’ve made lots of money with the game have a tendency to get greedy, and give it all back by refusing to quit.

In either case, it’s extremely important to set up both baccarat win and loss limits. As the names imply, these are simply pre-determined limits that let you know when it’s time to stop playing casino games. For example, if you have a $200 bankroll, a good win limit would be increasing your bankroll by 40% (quit at $280), and a good loss limit would be losing 50% of your roll (quit at $100).

Assuming you can stick to your win and loss limits, you will preserve your bankroll and be able to avoid making foolish decisions at the table.  

Everything we’ve discussed so far might sound like quite a bit of work for such a simple casino game. However, you’ll get more enjoyment from baccarat by taking the guesswork out of bankroll management. And what’s nice is that you’ll know how much money you need to set aside before hitting the baccarat tables.