Baccarat Strategy

Long held as a  casinogame only for the elite and snobby, baccarat is now more accessible to everyone. This is especially the case with online baccarat where you can play hands for as little as $1! But just because you can play baccarat hands cheaply doesn’t mean that you should wing it when it comes to baccarat strategy. Instead, you should use the following tips to minimize the casino house edge and maximize your profits.

Baccarat is a relatively easy casino game in terms of strategy because there are only three main bets you can choose from: betting on the banker hand, betting on the player hand and betting on both hands to tie. Out of these three options, your best option is to go with the banker bet because this only gives the house a 1.06% edge (in six deck games). Your next best option is the casino player bet, which still offers a relatively low house edge at 1.24%. But whatever you do, you want to….

The baccarat tie bet is one of the worst deals in all of gambling because it gives the house a ridiculous 14.4% edge. Sure the tie bet offers an excellent payout at 8-1, but the tie wager only wins 9.4% of the time. So while the casino high payout might make this a fun bet to try, you’re rarely going to win making both the player and banker bets much more attractive options.

Much like blackjack, your chances of winning in baccarat improve significantly as the number of casino decks decrease. This being the case, your best odds lie with single deck baccarat where the house edge is at its lowest on the banker bet. Single deck banker bets only give the house a 1.01% edge, which is one of the lowest in all of gambling. Unfortunately, you’ll see the house edge on player and tie bets increase to 1.29% and 15.57%. But since these aren’t as favorable of wagers as the casino banker bet, it doesn’t matter much since you shouldn’t be making these bets anyways.

Along with looking for single deck baccarat, another thing you can do is search for reduced commission baccarat. If you’re unfamiliar with reduced commission casino baccarat, this simply means that the house takes less than the standard 5% commission on winning banker bets. In most cases, the house will cut the commission down to 4%, which brings their edge from 1.06% down to 0.6%. The problem with reduced commission baccarat games is that they’re pretty hard to find since casinos don’t like giving away their edge. But if you can find one of these games, it’s highly recommended that you play it.

One common baccarat strategy involves tracking hands to see how many times the player and banker bets win. The idea behind this is that you want to use previous results to predict what will happen in future hands – i.e. six winning banker hands in a row means there’s a strong chance that the casino player will win next. However, this system is flawed because past baccarat hands have nothing to do with future results. The banker winning six hands in a row doesn’t change the odds on the next hand, so you’re wasting your time by tracking hands. Even still, tracking hands can add some fun to the game, and break the monotony of betting on the banker every time.

One last important tip for baccarat involves calculating how long you can afford to play. The first thing you need to know in order to determine how long you can play baccarat is the casino stakes you’ll be playing; in this instance, let’s say that you play $10 baccarat. The second part of this equation involves factoring in the house edge; if you stick with banker bets, you’ll be losing at a 1.06% rate. For the last piece of this equation, we’re going to say that you’re dealt 80 hands per hour. Using these numbers ($10 X 80 HPH X 0.0106), you would be able to play 8.48 hours in theory. Obviously things might not work out this neatly, but you get the idea.