by Matthew Gover | Date of Publishing: 9 June 2022
French nobility began playing this game of chance in the 1800s. These days, people from all walks of life enjoy this form of entertainment. Baccarat experienced a new lease of life after appearing in the opening scene of 1962’s first James Bond movie, Dr No.
20th Century Bond favours ‘chemin-de-fer’, also referred to as ‘shimmy’, or ‘chemmy’. The other two popular variants are ‘punto banco’ (North American), and ‘baccarat banque’. All offer Baccarat players a reasonably low house-advantage and are simple to master.
Here at JeffBet, we think that although this is a simple game of chance, there are advantages to having a strategy.
Let’s start with the basics of playing baccarat for any newbies and then offer some top tips on playing this popular table game.
Table of Contents
As is the case with many table card games, the winning hand is the one that holds the highest value. In this case, you are aiming for 9, or as close as possible. If your cards total 8 or 9 this is known as a ‘natural’.
Let’s look at the fundamentals of playing baccarat, starting with the three possible bets you can place:
As is clear – there are only 3 outcomes from this game and if you place the correct bet, you win the game. Calculated based on a game with 8 decks of cards, the house edge is 1.06% for the banker’s hand, 1.24% for the player’s hand and you can expect 14.36% on a tie.
The latter offers a bigger payout, but as you can see – you are far less likely to win. It’s also important to be aware of what the cards represent in terms of points.
See below the card values used in baccarat:
If you are dealt 2 cards with a value of 8 or 9 – you win. If the dealer lands a natural – you lose.
We have included below the top 5 tips used to try to get the upper hand when playing Baccarat.
Another top tip is to check the RTP (Return to Player) – you will probably find that a banker bet has an RTP of around 98.94%. For those unaware, this means that for every £1,000 you bet on the banker – you will theoretically get £989.4 back (based on millions of plays). The player hand meanwhile has an average RTP of 98.76%, whilst a tie wager is only 85.64%.
Whilst the ‘Martingale Strategy’ is not the first system we thought of in terms of low-risk – it is worth a mention. This entails doubling losing bets as you go along.
For instance:
On the opposite end of the scale is the ‘Paroli Strategy’. This consists of doubling up on a winning hand and is based on 3 consecutive wins before starting again.
For instance:
Both of the aforementioned baccarat strategies are easy to implement when playing Mini baccarat. This is like traditional baccarat’s younger sibling and will see you placing small bets each time.
We are talking as low as 20p per wager! The best part is the rules are exactly the same, so you don’t need to spend time learning a new game.
Next we talk about the baccarat 1234 system, which is one of the easiest to add to your plan moving forward.
This baccarat strategy is one of the simplest to master and incorporate, even for beginners. This will see you placing bets in currency units – such as £10, £100, £1,000 and so on
For instance:
Even if you only win 2 games in a row, you are still going to make 2 units in profit, due to your winnings in bet 2. If you were to use this in conjunction with mini baccarat, you could implement this rule using smaller bets like £1, followed by £2, £3, and £4 whilst you learn the ropes.
Author: Matthew Gover.
After graduating, Matthew began working as an English teacher abroad, initially in Spain and then Vietnam before finally coming back to the UK to settle. Matthew has always had a love for writing and an even bigger love for the igaming industry... Read More
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