How to Play Baccarat for Beginners

Baccarat is a card game, rules of it are pretty easy to learn. Despite the fact that Baccarat is not very popular among domestic gamblers, it is recognized and loved in the world. Moreover, due to the peculiarities of the gameplay, it often attracts the attention of lovers of strategic games. This is largely due to the fact that the chances of winning or losing are approximately equal, and you can bet even on your opponent’s win. From this article, you can find out everything you need in order to start playing baccarat in a few minutes.

A brief history of Baccarat

According to the most common theory, baccarat appeared in the 15th century in France, where it came from Italy. For a long time, it was considered not so much as a game of chance, but as a certain sign of aristocracy. It was the court nobles who entertained themselves with this game for the next several centuries. However, there are alternative theories about the emergence of this game, including the hypothesis that baccarat appeared only in the 19th century and immediately became part of the gambling business.

As for today, there are several varieties of this game, the most popular of which is the mini-baccarat. The prefix “mini” was lost over time. In addition, the rules of the game of baccarat in a casino provide the maximum approximation of the probability of loss to the probability of victory, while in traditional baccarat it was much easier to win.

Baccarat rules

If you decide to learn how to play baccarat, the instruction will be much shorter if you have previously dealt with blackjack. These two games basically have something in common - in both cases, each card has a point value, and the player’s goal is to approach a certain number of points. The rules of the game are easy to understand:

The player makes a bet. You can bet both on your victory and on loss, in addition, there is the opportunity to predict a draw;
The player and the banker receive two cards each;
After scoring, a decision is made to issue a third card - to the player, it is issued if the sum of his points does not exceed 5. For the dealer, the rules are slightly different - he receives a card if he scores 4 or fewer points;
The winner is the one who scored the most points (the highest possible is 9 points);
If a player bet on himself and won, he receives a double bet; if he bet on a bank and loses, he also receives a double bet. If a player bets on the Bank but wins, the bet is burned out. A bet on a draw is paid 9 to 1 or 8 to 1 (depending on the variation of baccarat in a casino).

Separately, consider the principle of scoring:

Cards from 2 to 9 bring points corresponding to their face value;
Ace brings 1 point;
Cards 10, Jack, Queen and King bring 0 points;
If the total score is 10 or more, dozens are excluded. Those. 14 points turn into 4 points.

Helpful information

A distinctive feature of baccarat is the ability to bet both on the player and the dealer. However, since the player cannot directly influence the gameplay, it all comes down to trying to guess one of three possible outcomes. Some similarities of this circumstance with bets on "odds" in roulette make players try to come up with various tactics and strategies, hoping to create a win-win algorithm. Naturally, such an event was doomed to failure from the very beginning, however, unlike roulette, it is quite easy to calculate the casino advantages for each outcome in baccarat: 1.06% when betting on a player, 1.24% when betting on a croupier and up to 14% when betting on a draw.

Thus, when playing cards in baccarat, the rules and coefficients make it quite clear that the most correct decision is to constantly bet on the croupier on victory. However, if you want to diversify the gameplay a bit, you can try to apply the martingale system and, for example, the Donald-Nathanson algorithm to the game.