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Baccarat is a casino card game believed to have been brought into France by the Italians, somewhere between 1483-1498, and has similarities to the games Faro and Basset. Baccarat is an ancient game of chance or luck, as are most casino card games, that translates to mean ‘zero’ in either French or Spanish. It is also the term of the worst hand you can play at the game. Let’s look at some of the rules of this classic European game.

The Basic Rules:
Held usually in a separate area of the Casino, a Baccarat game will include a table roughly the size of a crap table, three dealers and anywhere from 12-14 players. In the game there are only three results; Banker, Player and Tie.

The Baccarat cards are also different than that of other games. In Baccarat value an Ace is 1, the cards 2 to 9 are counted at face value and the 10’s, Jacks, Queens and Kings are valued at Baccarat, or in other words, zero.

Betting
Bets are placed by the players, including the players that choose to deal on the Player, Banker or the Tie. The player that deals hold what is called Shoe, and so long as the bank keeps winning, the player keeps holding the Shoe, as soon as the bank losses, this Shoe pass onto the next player. A dealer can also choose not to deal at by default the Shoe falls onto the next player.

Two hands will be dealt and a player will choose and bet on which he or she thinks will be the winning hand or a tie. Each hand consists of a minimum of 2 cards and a maximum of 5 cards.

The Card Values
The combined value of the cards must never exceed the number 9, therefore is a player gets an 8 and a 3, the combined value of this number, in this case 11 will have 10 subtracted from it leaving the score at 1. The highest score obtainable is a 9, and the next best hand is an 8.

If a player so happens to land a hand of 8 or 9 then no other cards are issued. If the end score is the same total on both ends, then it’s a tie.

The Game

At this point the dealer places 2 cards face down in front of the players, under the shoe and the largest bet on Player gets another two cards, also facedown. The player looks at the cards and then hands them back to the dealer.
After this, all the cards are opened and the casino announces the winner.

Additional Information
Whenever a player bets on the Bank a tax is charged, and that tax amounts to 5% of the bet. This is because the chances of the Bank winning are a good 2 to 3 times higher than that of a Player winning. So to even things out, the tax is placed on the player betting Bank.

There are several different types of Baccarat or variants of the game; baccarat chemin de fer, baccarat banque and punto banco and each game comes with slight differences in ruling.

Improving Your Game
There are some basic guidelines you can follow to improve your game of Baccarat. One of these is the highest chance you have of winning a game is by placing your bet on the Bank, if you are holding an 8 deck shoe your advantage will be great. The tie is the least promising, even with its 8:1 payoff.
For the highest odds at Baccarat play at tables with only 1 Baccarat (zero), at tables with doubles zeros (00) the chances of your winning fall quite drastically.
The French have a term, Avant Dernier, meaning ‘before last’. That’s exactly what you do; place your bet always on the hand that won before the last hand. This means that if the winning hands so far were Player, Banker, Player, you would place your bet on Banker.

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