The Elegance of Baccarat
If you’ve been to a sticky-floor California card room or the tuxedo-laden casinos of Monaco, you’ve probably seen baccarat. This elegant game of ritual and Bond-dipped mystique is among the most popular table games in the world, generating more casino revenue than any other. And while it might not be the most exciting game to play, it’s a very simple one, despite what the delusional, wrong motherfuckers who stare at the banker/player results screens all day would tell you.
Unlike blackjack, where you have to know all the rules, in baccarat you just have to decide whether to bet on player or banker. The dealer deals two cards for each hand. The side that gets the value closest to nine wins. The value is determined by adding the values of each hand, with picture cards and 10s counting as zero, and aces as one. The ‘natural’ win, when both hands total eight or nine, ends the game. Otherwise, a third card is drawn if the first two cards don’t equal a winning number. In either case, the winning bets are paid and the loser bets are collected by the dealer.
The Banker bet pays out 1:1, and the house edge is a bit lower than that of the Player bet (it’s also more likely to hit). The game has a third option, the tie, but it has a much higher house edge.
Most serious players stick to the player or banker bets and don’t bet on ties, which pay 8 to 1, but have a house edge of more than 14 percent. But, as Forbes Passport recently discovered in Macau, high rollers do like to gamble on baccarat. The game’s swank and genteel atmosphere draws some of the biggest players in gambling, with wagers of $100,000 per hand not uncommon.
The snob appeal of the game has spawned a variety of variations on it, including mini-baccarat and side bets. Commission-free baccarat streamlined the game, freeing dealers from having to pause and make change “like a paperboy,” Snow says. And the addition of smaller stakes opened the game to mass players.
But even with all these new additions, baccarat still retains its Zen-like minimalism. You can place bets with as little as $5 a hand, and there are no complicated rules about when to raise or lower your bets. The only choice you have to make is if you want to bet on the Player or the Banker, and that decision is almost a coin flip. Then just watch and enjoy as your chips pile up. And don’t forget to tip the dealer. It’s the least you can do. After all, he’s a professional.