Baccarat Tips

Although Baccarat is essentially a game of luck, there have been many attempts to devise strategies that can increase one's chances of winning. Here we will look at Baccarat strategy and see if does make any sense, or whether we might as well go with our gut instincts.

When you play baccarat online or at a real casino then there are only a few choices that you need to make. You must decide whether to bet on the bank, the player or on a tie, and you must decide the size of your stake.

First we will look at whether or not there are any influences that might increase your chances of making a correct prediction of the result of any hand when playing baccarat. Most casinos post detailed statistics of the results of previous hands and many players of the game study these in order to help them judge the outcome of the forthcoming hand.

We can quickly say that however you analyse the results of previous hands there is absolutely no way that you can find any indication to the results of forthcoming hands. Although baccarat hands are not truly independent events as the cards are played from a shoe of (generally) eight decks and so the outcome of future hands must be influenced by what cards have been played already, so complex are the relationships that even with a perfect knowledge of the remaining cards it would be extremely difficult to predict the future outcomes. So although the events are not truly independent, they are virtually so.

Next we will look at the best bets you can make. Most real and online casinos pay out 8.1 on winning tie bets. This is very ungenerous, and gives the house an edge of around 14%. The advice is simple: never bet on a tie at these odds. However if you search around you will find some casinos which pay out at 9.1 which produced a much lower house edge and makes a tie bet almost worthwhile, but not quite.

House edges on banker and player bet are much lower and more or less the same as roulette. If you want to maximise your chances then always bet on the bank, however the difference between that on a player bet are so small you might just as well go with your instincts.