Baccarat Strategy

BET SIZING WITH THE "SYSTEM"

Once you have calculated percentages, and know which results have come up with unusual frequency, and know which way you are going to wager, the final step in this process is bet sizing. To do this, you are going to have to establish something called a bet spread, and decide how that will be divided into units. This kind of thing will often be dictated by what the table minimum and/or maximum is. The general feeling about baccarat is that it is a game dominated by the higher level bettors, but as we pointed out when we introduced this section on baccarat, that is not necessarily the case. There are lower limit tables; there is mini-baccarat, and there are online casinos that make this game as accessible as anything else. Let's just say for the sake of argument that you are able to bet as little as $5 on a single baccarat hand.

The "bet spread" is the ratio of the lowest bet you are making to the highest bet you'll be making. A table may have a minimum bet of $5 and a maximum of $500. Well, that means there is a 1-to-100 bet spread that is ALLOWABLE, but it doesn't mean that is the bet spread YOU are going to use. If you decide that your minimum is $5 and your self-imposed maximum is $20, that is a 1-to-4 bet spread.

You will be dividing this bet spread into units. Generally this will be reflected in increments of the minimum bet. With the 1-to-4 bet spread, you'll have four units of wagering - $5, $10, $15 and $20. A common practice in a game like blackjack, for instance, is to relate the number of units you play to the percentage chance you feel you have.

In the way of an example that we can relate to baccarat, let's say that you have decided that your minimum bet is going to be $5 and that your maximum is going to be $50, if that doesn't put an unnecessary strain on your bankroll. That's a 1-to-10 bet spread, and it fits nicely into increments of $5 wagers that go all the way up to $50. Whether any one situation warrants that one bet could be ten times that of another bet is a good question. Perhaps it isn't, but going from $5 to $25 or from $10 to $50 isn't so bad either.

There is nothing incredibly scientific about it, but it does offer a relatively reasonable money management method you may want to try, that is, if you believe you are operating with an edge on any given hand in baccarat. One thing you certainly don't want to do is go crazy on a whim, or bet amounts of money that are totally out of proportion with your bankroll. We'll certainly get into the subtleties of money management in another part of this section, but a wise rule of thumb is to keep your maximum bets to about 1/40 of the money you are using as the playing bankroll at any given time.