Baccarat Basics

One of the oldest games you'll find in any casino is the game of baccarat. This table game became popular in France after it was introduced to the country from Italy in the late 1400's. It became a favorite with French nobility, and until recently had been a high-roller game that could only be played on big-limit tables. Today baccarat is the favorite game of Asian high rollers, and is growing in popularity in North America and other parts of Europe. Vegas and Atlantic City casinos have been adding elaborate baccarat pits to provide for the growing number of baccarat players in their casinos in the last five years.

Online baccarat has brought the game to the low-stakes player. Electronic casinos don't have to pay live dealers, so the game can be played at low stakes without being too costly for the casino to provide. The game is simple to play and carries a small house edge, making it easy for the player to go on a run and have a profitable session.

There isn't any real strategy involved in the version of the game you'll find online and in most live casinos around the world. Punto Banco is the most common version of baccarat in the world. In this game the house is always the bank, and the player gets to bet on the bank's or the player's hand being the winner. There's a third betting option that offers action on the two hands being a tie, but it's not a good bet because it only pays 8 to 1, and a tie will occur much less than one in eight hands dealt. The bank holds a slight an edge in the hand, so betting on the bank every time provides a better chance to win; that's why bank winning bets cost 5%.

The most important thing to know when playing baccarat is your limit. Once you figure out how much you can afford to play with, you can divide that amount between the number of sessions that you'd like to play. Try to walk away from a session where you've doubled your buy-in amount, because the variance of the game will eventually catch up to you and deplete your winnings.