Can Baccarat Be Beaten? : Complete Guide

Can Baccarat Be Beaten? Yes, it can surely be beaten. There is no game on the face of the earth that is designed in such a way that there is no favorable outcome for the players. Baccarat is considered tough and in reality, it is very hard to win from in the casino. It is one of the most ancient casino game out there and it is a very weird game, where your skill is secondary but other factors that needs understanding and implementing to be able to win are the real actors of success in beating Baccarat.

The very Basics of Baccarat

Playing Baccarat

To get your answer to the question, a Baccarat be beaten? You need to know these very fundamentals or you are never going to make it in this game.

There are only two hands in Baccarat and you don’t have the liberty to play your own hand:

1. The player hand
2. The banker’s hand

You would assume you would have to bet on a player’s hand but the answer is no and you can bet on either one of the two hands.  Sometimes hands in a 50/50 outcome or in other words a tie which you can also bet on, giving you a possibility of three betting options.

There are three versions of Baccarat available:

1. Punto Banco
2. Chemin de fer
3. Baccarat Banque

The Punto Banco is the most popular version of Baccarat and we will primarily focus on that in this article.

How to Play Baccarat for The First Time

Learn the basics of baccarat or else!

Baccarat can be seen as a game where you compare cards, the aim is to compare one hand to another hand to see which one wins. The hand with the higher tally of points is the winner and it draws a resemblance to comparing games like Poker and the most resemblance to blackjack.

The rules of calculating the point in Baccarat is unique:

• Whatever is written on the cards is their value in point for 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
• The 10s, jacks, queens, and the kings have a worth of 0 points.
• The aces are worth 1 point only.

The calculation of points in Baccarat has special rules. For example, if you have 8 points, it means 8 points. If you have 7 points it means you have 7 points but if your total is 16 points, then the number on the left is dropped and the one on the right is kept. It applies to all double-digit numbers. The example of 16 that we talked about, will give us 6 points as the number on the left, in this case, 1; is dropped.

In the most popular version of Baccarat, the Punto Banco. The casino will always act as a banker and there is no involvement of other players in the game.

Similar to blackjack, the casino deals from a shoe, which typically contains eight decks of cards. The dealer begins by extinguishing a card. The dealer then burns a number of cards according to the value of the burn card. These cards are burnt with their backs to the audience.

Just as in blackjack, every hand gets two cards. Alternatively, they are handled, first with a player hand card, then a banker’s hand card, then a second player hand card, and a second dealer’s hand card.

If one hand has a total of eight or nine, that’s the hand. The dealer will report the winner, collect the lost bets, and reward the winning bets.

If we look at these rules closely and learn the basics with great concentration. We can easily beat Baccarat and, the question that “can baccarat be beaten?” has a simple answer, it is all in the understanding of the rules.

Basics of the drawing in Baccarat

The dealer initially checks for a third card from the player’s hand. The rules are straightforward and the complexity isn’t there. If the player is handing in 5 or less than that, then this hand gets a third card. But if the hand doesn’t have a value of 5 or less then the third card is not given.

The dealer then selects whether or not to give the banker a third card. The first issue is whether the player has a 3rd card. If the hand of the player has stood, the hand of the banker follows the rules of the hand of the player, and then it is with the banker to deal the third card to the player or not.

However, if the player receives a third card, the rules are made more complex for the banker, and they are based on the total banker’s hand and on the third card’s value, as follows:

1. If the total is 2 then the banker hand will always have the liberty of a third card.
2. A third card is given to the banker if the total hand is 3 and the third card of the player is 8.
3. The third card is given to the banker’s hand when the total hand is 4 and the third card of the player hand is 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7
4. A third card will be issued to the banker if the hand total is five and the third card of the hand is four, five, six, or seven.
5. If the total hand is 6 and the third card of the player hand is 6 or 7, the banker will receive a third card.
6. If the banker’s hand is 7, it is the same

The highest total scoring hand wins.

The Betting at the Baccarat Table

Who to bet on?

You have three possibilities for betting at the baccarat:

1. Player
2.  Banker
3. Tie

The player’s bet will always be paying off even money, while the banker bet will pay off with odds of 19 to 20 while the tie bet will pay off at 8 to 1.

We can illustrate it with these examples:

1. You bet $50 on the player and you have won. You will get your own $50 and on top of that a wining of $50.
2. You place a bet of $50 on the banker and you win. You will get your $50 back but $45 in winnings.
3. You place a bet of $50 on a tie and win. You get $50 but you get a whopping $450.

If this is very complex looking then this game is better to be avoided but if till this point, you are confident enough to grasp the majority of the rules and the way this game is paled, then you may go ahead further and dive deep into understanding this game.

Baccarat is a high betting game and the minimum bet starts from $100 in most cases per hand and it can go upwards to $1000 and even beyond that.

Can baccarat be beaten? Yes, it can be beaten if you are understanding the basics of it thus far, now we will move to more complex things.

Can you beat baccarat? : The ultimate question

There is no casino game that can’t be beaten, people just have a fear of this game and feel it is very tough./Yes it is tough but remove the word “very.”

Luck plays an important factor in this game like any other game but over here in the short run you have to pray for luck to be on your side. In the long run, though the beating of baccarat is no short than a miracle as the mathematical advantage will always lie in the favor of the casino.

What we have learned so far, in the short run you can beat baccarat but in the long run, beating baccarat is not possible easily and is an equivalent of a miracle.

There is no baccarat strategy, because only you decide what to gamble on. You can’t decide if you’re hit or stand.

Neither works card counting in baccarat. They have done the calculation, and from counting cards in baccarat, you just cannot obtain enough of the margin to make it worthwhile.

Neither does it work in the long run to change the sizes of your bets based on what transpired in earlier bets. However, this is the popular “Strategy of Baccarat and this is the most flawed and the strategy a noob will adopt who is not aware of the fact that that baccarat will punish you if you are deploying this strategy.

You will discover gamers that carefully track the bets they win and how many times they win. Some will be jumping on one side or the other if it wins a lot and this can get them confused and the favors will turn in the favor of the casino. For instance, you could sit down and play 4 baccarat hands and the player bet could win three. You may (error in your judgment) think that the player bet wins 75%, so you bet on the player.

There is a mother mistake that most players make, for example, you are thinking that the game is 50% on this side of the player and 50% on the side of the banker if the player bet is winning 3 times in a row, then the winner is about to get his turn but it doesn’t happen like that in Baccarat and you can’t predict it. Like other games, the prediction here is not easy.

After you have lost, naturally one of the methods is to increase your bets to get back your losses but it doesn’t work like that and you certainly will be bound to fail if you do that in the majority of the cases.

The odds are decided by the deck cards. In an eight-deck shoe, what has transpired in prior hands has a limited impact. And the only reason prior hands influence the likelihood of the following hand is that it alters the shape of the deck (the cards that have been played are no longer in the deck).

But the math they did. The counting cards on baccarat cannot provide you an edge.

You might attempt the Martingale Strategy if you double the bet size after each loss. The problem is that your bet size grows too large since it’s too rapid.

If the betting range is less, then the martingale strategy is redundant but if the betting range is wide then you can have a chance using this strategy.

The Best Adopted strategy to Win at Baccarat

Cost of entertainment

This strategy is going to have the principles that we talked about before. In the short term, your chances of beating the baccarat are more than in the long term. Thus the basics of it are dead simple.

Baccarat is essentially for entertainment

There is no way you can make a living out of Baccarat or surely have a strategy that can tell you that now you can and will defeat the baccarat. There is not one who can predict this nor anyone who has mastered it. The best way is to relax and see the game as entertainment and then respect the rules of the casino and the table in particular.

It will cost you money like any other game

You’re going to win in baccarat occasionally and lose sometimes. But you will lose more frequently than not, and the cost of your enjoyment is these net losses. You’ll feel that baccarat is no different than buying a video game or watching a game of basketball.

Keep the cost of entertainment low

The principles of probability will always be in the favor of the casino in the long run. Thus calculating the winning odds is very important you need to place your bets in accordance with that, and thus keeping your entertainment cost as you desired but for most players, they would ideally want to keep it low to get more entertainment in less money.

Who to Bet on in Baccarat?

The obvious answer is the banker as his edge will always be more. The player bet can be a good option but the element of risk is more in comparison to betting on the banker. The tie bet has the most risk and it is illogical to bet on it if you have a concrete strategy because yes it pays more but the chances of you winning are very slim.

The simple rule that we will tell you is to not rely on your 6th sense, you can’t do that. Just stay on the side of the banker if you want to win as it has the least risk involved and in the long-term, the banker will win.

Can I Win at Bacarrat Always?

The simple answer to this is, no! You can not win at Bacarrat always and this is not a question a person with a winning mindset should be asking.

The bottom line

You will be highly disappointed because of the answers you got to your question “Can baccarat be beaten?” But it is the reality, that in the short-term you might have chances but in the long-term, the banker will always be preferred.

See the game as entertainment and lower your cost of entertainment. But if you are betting rather than playing, then surely siding with the banker is the way to go because the chances of the player beating the banker, are very low.

But despite all this, if you have taken the challenge to beat baccarat then keep your cost of entertainment in check.