The New Player's Introduction to Baccarat

Published: January 2, 2014

Baccarat is probably the casino card game that the fewest people know how to play. Coincidentally, it's also probably the card game that is the easiest to learn how to play. More people know how to play blackjack, but they don't know that they could achieve a similar payout rate in Baccarat without all of the studying and trying to count cards. This is a game that involves betting on the outcomes of hands instead of trying to play a hand for yourself, so while the strategic elements are limited, it's definitely a game that can give you a lot of action.

The basic play of Baccarat is as follows. Players place their bets, and the dealer deals out two hands. Those two hands are called the player hand and the banker hand. The dealer will then hit to the player and banker hand based on certain rules. The winning hand is the one that is closest to nine where aces are always worth one and tens, jacks, queens and kings are always worth zero. The dealer does all of the play based on specific algorithms that you don't have to know if you want to get started playing.

There are three major bets that every Baccarat game will have. Then there may be other side bets if you are playing a special Baccarat variant. The bet on the player hand has a house advantage of about 1.24 percent, and it pays out at 1:1. The bet on the banker hand has a slightly smaller house advantage of 1.06, and it wins a bit more often than the player hand. To compensate for some of this, the banker hand pays out at 0.95:1 instead of 1:1. That is, if you bet $100 on the banker hand and win, then your profit on the bet will be $95.

You can also place a bet on a tie, but that's usually the worst bet possible with a whooping house advantage of about 14.36. If you see a player make a tie bet, then you can guarantee that they have no idea what they are doing and are just looking for a thrill. Baccarat is a simple game to learn, but there is a good deal of work you can do with trying to track hands and cards to try to figure out what's going to come next. It's also possible to do a limited form of card counting in this game.