7 Amazing Baccarat Secrets No One Tells You About

Baccarat boasts a reputation as one of the casino’s most mysterious and secretive games, and for good reason. A game of chance derived from French and Italian origins; baccarat is nonetheless beloved by members of the Asian community.

In every casino in this country, and all over the world, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean gamblers flock to the baccarat tables to sweat every turn of the cards.

This unique gameplay element alone leaves folks who are unaccustomed to baccarat confused, and also intrigued. Throw in the typical placement of “big” baccarat tables within secluded high-limit parlors, and this game is definitely unlike any other.

It’s a complex game, which means reading an expert guide to playing baccarat is a must. Once you’ve got the basics down, you’ll want to know about these seven baccarat secrets that nobody bothered to tell you about.

Ask a handful of experienced gamblers about how to play baccarat the right way, and you’ll inevitably catch a few odd looks and shakes of the head.

For many players, the idea of applying skill and strategy to baccarat is a misnomer, simply because the game stands out as a pure game of chance.

Offering players no partial information decision making, a la blackjack or video poker, baccarat relies on random chance alone to determine whether the banker or player hand will wind up reaching the closest total to nine.

While wheel spinners have several betting options to choose from, the game’s probability to payout ratios ensures that the house edge on every possible roulette wager remains identical across the board.

It doesn’t matter if you bet on red or black, odd or even, single numbers, or a four-number “corner.” In each and every case, you’ll face a house edge of 2.70% on European single-zero wheels and 5.26% on American double-zero wheels.

This standardization completely removes strategy from the equation for roulette players, turning the affair into a mere guessing game.

On its face, roulette would seem quite similar, challenging players to nothing more difficult than guessing whether banker or player will wind up getting closer to nine in the end.

In reality though, a design element of baccarat gameplay which dictates that the banker hand always decides on its third-card draw last changes everything.

With the banker hand always “acting” last, it holds a slight statistical advantage over the player hand when assessed in long-run terms as you can see in the table below.

Blessed with an additional 1.23% of win probability on every deal, the banker hand always offers bettors slightly improved odds when compared to the player hand.

That bears out in the two hands’ respective house edge rates, too.

Knowing these mathematical facts, a baccarat player attempting to apply the perfect strategy needs to do nothing more than bet on the banker every time out.

Of course, you might grow bored making the same wager over and over again without interruption, but doing so gives you the highest expected return on your money.

If you were wondering about the secrets of winning baccarat, one thing you must understand is the house edge and your win probability. Once you get that down, you can sign up at a reputable online casino to start playing.

Every so often, at the baccarat table, you’ll hear a happy winner start whooping it up more loudly than usual.

These players aren’t celebrating yet another even money payout though, they’re stacking a mountain of chips after scoring an 8 to 1 return on the tie bet.

Little do they know, one of the secrets of winning baccarat is to avoid this wager entirely.

In baccarat, the fact that neither hand can go “bust” by exceeding a certain total means the banker and player will occasionally end up tied. This is better known as a “stalemate” to baccarat enthusiasts.

While it only happens on 9.51% of deals, many players love to chase the longshot by backing the tie bet.

Unfortunately, with true odds of right around 10 to 1, and payout odds of only 8 to 1, something just doesn’t add up. That ratio creates a house edge of 14.36%, and no, I didn’t miss a decimal place there.

You read the number correctly, as the tie bet in baccarat ranks as one of the worst wagers ever offered in the casino.

To see just how bad betting the tie really is, check out the table below to compare a handful of the most infamous “sucker” bets ever rolled out.

One of the untold baccarat secrets is to avoid the tie bet, and you can also apply this to other sucker wagers in the casino.

Spend any amount of time lingering around the baccarat table, and you’ll inevitably hear what sounds like a bedtime story being told.

The “Big Eyed Boy” heads down the “Big Road,” where he meets a “Cockroach Pig” traveling up from the “Small Road.”

These aren’t the beginnings of a bad fairy tale though, their colloquial names for the scoreboard systems used by superstitious baccarat players.

For an in-depth explainer on baccarat scoreboards, you’ll want to brush up on the scoreboard basics.

By tracking various patterns and streaks from prior banker and player wins, these players hope to divine insight into which hand will win on the next deal.

That’s all poppycock, of course, as previous outcomes have no impact on completely independent and random events in the future. Believe me, I wish there was a baccarat secret pattern that existed, but sadly, that’s not the case.

Nonetheless, baccarat regulars love their scoreboards, so you’ll never fail to see somebody scribbling info down and anxiously scanning the figures flashing overhead.

In 2018 alone, casinos in Nevada hauled in more than a billion dollars on baccarat.

That puts baccarat in the upper echelon of casino industry favorites, as shown by the annual win data compiled by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB).

Now that you know a few secrets to winning baccarat, you can take what you’ve learned and start winning more money. You have plenty of great options to choose from if you want to play live baccarat online.

One site I always recommend is Ignition Casino. Not only can you play baccarat on their site, but you can also play a variety of other casino games.

Be sure to take advantage of their 300% welcome bonus (up to $3,000) by signing up now!

In the casino world, tournament play is largely reserved for the poker room, where players pony up cash buy-ins for tourney chips before competing for an escalating prize pool.

Tournaments can also occasionally be found amongst blackjack players and slot spinners too, but these are far less common. It’s one game that doesn’t seem to lend itself to the tournament format, but nobody told Chinese card sharp Lin Haisan.

Back in March of 2015, while attending the World Series Baccarat Championship at the Sheraton Macao Hotel, the Hong Kong native beat out all comers in a one-of-a-king baccarat tournament.

As a reward, Haisan was awarded a massive cash prize of $12,890,500, establishing a new Guinness Book of Records mark for the largest baccarat payout ever won.

If you thought the billion-dollar win from baccarat in Nevada was big news, wait ‘til you hear about what’s happening in Macau.

The Chinese-controlled Asian gambling mecca has 40 casino resorts operating within a condensed metropolitan area.

And in 2017, those casinos generated $33.2 billion in total win, with a whopping 88% ($29.2 billion) derived from baccarat alone.

Slot machines are a big money maker for Las Vegas and American casinos in general. That’s not the case in all parts of the world, as we see here.

Maybe the baccarat players in Macau truly know the secret to winning baccarat, but I’m willing to bet they just love to play.

Can you blame them?

This tale is a wild one, but a few years back, poker superstar Phil Ivey and his partner discovered a way to use defects on the back of playing cards to their advantage.

Known as “edge-sorting,” this trick enabled them to win $10 million apiece from two major casinos during whirlwind high-stakes baccarat sessions.

Ivey ended up in a legal battle (and lost) as he was accused of cheating.

He ended up having to pay back $7.7 million of his winnings, but is it really that bad when he still took home more than $2 million?

If the best gamblers use casino baccarat secrets like this to make lots of money, why can’t you?

So, what is the secret to winning baccarat? Even though the game does seem mysterious, there are no tricks of the trade that are proven to work.

Like all casino games, baccarat is a game of chance. That’s why useful baccarat secrets have to do with understanding how the game odds work.

Banker bets have the best odds of winning, closely followed by the player. Tie bets do offer higher payouts than these two, but the true odds tell us that this wager is better off being left alone.

It makes more sense to stick to banker or player bets, with an emphasis on the former. In-person casinos will have you pay a commission for banker bets, but you can avoid that by playing baccarat online.

Now that you know these secrets to winning baccarat, it’s a good idea to know the ins and outs of other casino games. I’ll point you in the right direction with these slot machine secrets.

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Footnotes:

• Guinness World Records provided the story about the $12+ million baccarat winner.
• Phil Ivey’s legal battle details are courtesy of The Guardian.