How to Play the Casino Game of Baccarat

Did you know how to play Baccarat?

Baccarat is one of the most popular card games in casinos all over the world. You can also play online baccarat at most online casinos. The game of baccarat has the advantage of offering rules that can be assimilated in just a few minutes, unlike more complex games like blackjack or poker. Before discussing the baccarat rules of the game, let's analyze the structure and the goal of the game

In baccarat, the croupier uses between six and eight decks of cards laid out in a shoe. The object of the game is to make a correct prediction by betting on the victory of the player, on that of the bank or even on a player and bank equality.

The dealer will therefore not distribute cards to all players, unlike blackjack, but only to the bank, and to a fictitious player. The hand whose sum is closest to 9 wins the game. In the rules of baccarat, you will find the different values for the cards as follows: cards retain their numerical value in baccarat; special cards such as the 10 and face cards are worth zero points; the Ace, a special card, is worth one point.

Course of the game of Baccarat

Here are the baccarat rules described one by one with precision. The player places the bet of his choice on the hand obtained by the Bank or simply on the hand of the player around the table. He also has the option of betting on a tie between the two hands. The game can then begin. The dealer deals two cards both to the player and to the Bank.

We then proceed to the calculation in the wake of the total first cards by adding the points of each hand. The hand that comes closest to the value 9 wins. If the score does not exceed a specific number of points, a third card will be drawn.

How to do card counting

When a hand exceeds the value of 10, you can reduce this value in two ways: by subtracting the value of the hand by 10 or by removing the first digit of this value, which amounts to keeping only the digit of units. A hand that has a 6 of clubs and a 6 of diamonds has a total value of 12. To reduce it, you can deduct 10 from 12, or simply remove the first digit of this value. So you get a new value of 2.

There is a special rule concerning the drawing of an additional card. Depending on the score obtained in the previous step, the baccarat rule recommends that the croupier proceed to one more draw as follows:

• Player and third card: if the player gets a score lower than 6, an additional card is dealt to him. The player's third card is therefore added to the previous score. If the latter exceeds 10, the disappearance of the unit occurs again.
• Bank and third card: the bank will necessarily draw one more card if its score is 0, 1 or 2. If it is greater than or equal to 7, nothing happens, as required by baccarat rules.

Please note that the third card baccarat rule does not necessarily apply to all variants. The punto banco rules for example do not provide for a compulsory draw when the player obtains 5 points.

The game of Baccarat is one of the most famous casino games and it appears in numerous movies such as a few James Bond movies like GoldenEye or Casino Royale and Rush Hour 3.