Baccarat

A "BASIC" STRATEGY YOU CAN START WITH

When you are talking about baccarat, and this goes for whether you are playing in the brick and mortar casino as well as the online version, the first thing you have to do is know the rules. And this can be complicated unless you are paying close attention, although as anyone will point out to you, in the baccarat game the only role that you, the player, has is to make the determination as to how much to wager and who to place that wager on - whether that is going to be the Player or Banker, or, as a third alternative, a tie.

What you need to understand is that whether you make a bet on the Player or the Banker, it is going to pay off at even money (which means it is at a 1-to-1 rate), and when you make a successful bet on a tie that is going to pay off at 8-to-1 odds. One of the beautiful things about baccarat is that the house does not carry a big edge at all - in fact it is probably lower than that of all the casino card games - so it's not a bad game to play.

In fact, this is something that can be broken down, and although we must mention that the odds could be a little bit different depending on the rules of the game in any given location you go to, we can give you a relatively good idea of what you're looking at. If you place a wager on the Player hand, the house edge is usually going to be less than 1.3%. If you place a bet on the Banker hand, you have actually worked yourself into a wager with approximately a 1.35% edge of your own. Of course, not so fast, because with the Banker bet you are going to be coughing up a commission on all bets that are won (unlike a sportsbook, by the way, where you'll pay the "vig" on losing bets),

Don't despair all that much, though. Heck, even when you factor in the 5% commission that must be paid to the house on those winning bets, you are at less than a 1.2% disadvantage, and in fact, a slow as 1.06%. That's right - you are almost breaking even when you stick with Banker bets, which in the long run makes it a better proposition than backing the Player. And incidentally, you are not being "ripped off" or "fleeced" by having to pay that kind of vigorish. You know that the House is not going to let you make bets on a regular basis that are going to be disadvantageous to them, so what they do with the commission is to take a bet that has a player advantage and sort of transforms it into one that gives them the casino edge.

You'll often read about the "Basic Strategy" that we stress in the game of blackjack. In baccarat there can't be anything more basic than knowing that you are, in the long run, better off with the Banker.

That's a pretty good start, but it's not the end.