Luck & Baccarat Strategies
If you’ve played Baccarat you will be aware that it’s a game based on luck. But what if I told you that a little knowledge and strategy could turn the luck in your favour? I am here to explain the best strategies and practices to increase your odds of winning and decrease the chances of losing.
Assuming that you know how to play Baccarat, I have compiled the following Baccarat strategies after years of playing experience and researching in-depth about the other data-driven statistics from experts, It all comes down to your practice or skills, and the way you permutate these strategies every time you play Baccarat.
Get Your Feet Wet With These Key Pointers Before Playing Baccarat:
- Start by betting small, ₹100 or ₹250 to begin with.
- Learn to keep your scorecard and get familiar with the rules card.
- Unlike other casino games, Baccarat does not discriminate between an experienced player and a rookie, so play confidently.
- Do not play more than 5 games in any circumstances or strategy unless you’re on a winning streak.
- Despite winning or losing money, do not forget, Baccarat is a game of luck.
- Do not regret pulling out of a game because a fresh game technically means higher odds of winning.
Best Baccarat Strategy: Flat Betting
One of the easiest & rudimentary strategies, flat betting is when you bet on either the banker or the player and stick to either one and accept whatever the outcome of this would be. As simple as this sounds, you would be surprised to know how many people win and walk away with a lot more money than they bring to the table.
Based on the statistical data, the house edge on a banker bet is 1.06%, as opposed to players bet on banker at 1.24%. So, betting back to back on the banker gives you a statistical advantage. Having said that, playing too many hands can turn the odds against you.
For instance, if you are betting ₹100 on the first three dealt hands and if the player wins, you need to have a level head and maturity to pull out of the game and jump back in when you observe the winning of another player.
I suggest that you play the first 3 hands and bet on the banker. If you win, continue on this streak, and if you lose all three, pull out of the game and wait until a winning streak of another player begins.
Enter the game, and continue betting on the banker again. As the house odds of winning the tie bet stands at a much higher 14.36%, you can just ignore this, and all the bets placed by the other players on the tie and concentrate betting on the banker.
However, if you’re feeling particularly lucky on a special day, casinos offer an 8:1 or 9:1 betting odds where you can win 8 or 9 times the money you bet with. So cautiously consider betting with just ₹100 or ₹250, as the payoff is big and the loss is minimal.
Remember, betting on the banker also comes with a commission of 5%, which is to be paid to the casino, as these bets are usually placed to win small margins of money, paying 5% to the casino will not be a major deal for you.
Furthermore, you must use the flat betting strategy by betting small amounts, as this is a beginner’s strategy that I recommend to players who’re learning the ropes of Baccarat. There are always better strategies with complexities and intricacies you can use, as you gradually get better at playing Baccarat.
The Rebellious Chop
The chop strategy goes completely against the flat betting strategy where you bet opposite to the previously winning bet. For instance, if the banker wins a bet, you bet on either the player or the tie but you should ideally bet on the player as the odds of the house winning are still more than 14%.
Imagine flipping a coin and calling the opposite side each time, that’s exactly how the chop strategy works. You may easily get frustrated with this method because of the instability of your choice and players are known to abandon this strategy mid-game because it is stressful to bet on a different outcome each time.
But in a low wager game of ₹100 or ₹250, the odds may turn in your favour so try to mix & match the chop technique with flat betting to create higher odds of winning for yourself.
After sticking with the flat betting strategy, seasoned players cultivate the art of using the chop technique after betting on the banker for 3 or 4 units. This is just to take the winning streak with the flat betting strategy on the banker and betting on the player and crossing their fingers to go one extra step and win another unit before quitting the game.
As you continue practicing the chop strategy, you may begin using single, double, and even triple chop strategies where you chop after betting on the banker once, after two bets or three bets, and so on.
Is Counting Cards Recommended?
One of the most interesting and cheeky strategies is counting cards, which is not usually the favourite strategy of casinos, as it gives an edge to the mathematically strong players. However, the fact of the matter is that anyone who can quickly do basic addition and subtraction can count cards while playing card-based casino games online.
Infamous for being used while playing Blackjack, you can easily use a similar technique while playing Baccarat as well, as the principle of counting cards remains the same.
Before you start to learn this strategy, you’ve to put yourself in the ideal situation and the below pointers will help you to do so:
- Take a seat at a table where the game is about to begin and start fresh.
- Ensure that the dealer is using either a 6 deck shoe or an 8 deck shoe to draw cards.
- Observe if the deck is being fully emptied before a fresh deck is added to the shoe.
Once you are sure that at least the first two criteria mentioned above are fulfilled, you’re ready to start counting cards and turn the odds of winning as many games of Baccarat, towards you.
To begin with, go ahead and memorise the value of cards and their actions shown in the table below:
| Values of Dealt Cards | Their Action on Your Count |
|---|---|
| 4 | +2 |
| 6 | -2 |
| Ace, 2 or 3 | +1 |
| 5, 7 or 8 | -1 |
| 9, 10, King, Queen or Joker | +0 |
The table above is self-explanatory, as all you have to do is memorise the deduced value of the cards to three given numbers (0,1 & 2) and if they’re to be added or subtracted and do the math in your mind.
A few simple tricks to this are ensuring that the added or subtracted count is higher than that of the opposition bet and I recommend you to bet on the banker for this as well, as you are already aware of the statistical advantages of doing so. A banker bet has a winning advantage when the count is added to lower than 16 and if the count crosses 16, you should switch your bet to the player as it gains an advantage over the banker.
As a parenthesis to the previous statement, remember that when the counts of the player and the banker are even at two consecutive hands, you should switch to the player and continue with it and switch back when you’re down on counts or even, in the game, later on.
Counting cards while playing Baccarat online is easier, as you can write down the action you need to take as opposed to in a casino where you’ll have to memorise them. As the counting gets stronger with each dealt hand, you may have to sit at the table for longer periods of time which goes against every other suggested strategy and this could bring unwanted attention towards you.
If you’re wondering if there is a counting card strategy for the ties, let me assure you that there is but I would recommend not to count cards to place bets because the odds of winning diminish drastically if you do so.
As the counting of cards takes an excruciatingly long time than other strategies to win marginally more money, this method should be used to hone your skills as an intermediate level Baccarat players use this knowledge to level up to the expert status of applying multiple strategies, which I will explain below.
Is Following a Pattern an Effective Baccarat Strategy?
The strategy of pattern tracking involves observing the winning streak on the scorecard. An interface that consists of a grid with several blue, green, and red hollow circles.
- Red indicates a banker win
- Blue signifies a player win
- Green is for ties
The interesting thing about playing Baccarat online is that this scorecard is maintained automatically for the player, the banker and the ties, eliminating the hassle of manually marking your cards which would help you to track patterns.
What is deemed as the ‘big road”’ your winning streak is what paves way for the pattern tracking technique where you bet on the player or the banker which has more wins in comparison.
Recording downward vertically from the top left of the grid, if the banker is winning 4 rounds, 4 circles are marked in red and if the player wins 3 rounds, a blue row of 3 winning blue streaks are marked in the adjacent column of the grid.
These clear representations of winning streaks can be used to predict the forthcoming wins and this is the pattern tracking strategy.
To increase the odds of winning, you will need to know the statistics of pattern tracking.
- No surprise here as well, as the statistics indicate that the banker will have a marginal advantage of winning with 45.84% and the winning odds of the player hand standing at 44.61%, betting on the banker makes logical sense while using this strategy as well.
- The probability of a tie winning standing at 9.5% makes the least sense to bet on a tie.
Let us take a real gaming situation as a statistical example to explain pattern tracking:
In the 11th round where the banker bet has won 6 rounds (54.5% of the wins), the player has won 4 rounds (36.3% of wins) and the tie has taken the remaining one round (9.09% out of the wins), pattern tracking makes most sense as the banker bet winning statistic is 8.7% higher than the average mentioned earlier.
If you continue to confidently bet on the banker, keeping this new winning percentile in mind, the streak could go on for a couple of rounds more and as statistics mentioned earlier, the odds will eventually even out.
The Most Effective 1-3-2-4 Baccarat Strategy
Throwing caution to the wind and undermining other mainstream statistics, which show subtle differences between the banker bet and the player bet winning, the 1-3-2-4 strategy banks on the 50/50 odds of both the banker and the player winning.
So how does this exactly work?
Well, let’s consider these:
- 1 unit as ₹100
- 3 units as ₹300
- 2 as ₹200
- 4 as ₹400
Now, you’ll essentially need to bet on either the banker or the player, progressively, in this very pattern.
Get a glimpse of the below table for a better understanding, and for this example, we’re considering an initial bankroll of ₹100:
| Round | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Bet | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 4 |
| Outcome | Win (+1) | Win (+3) | Win (+2) | Loss (-4) | Loss (-1) | Loss (-1) | Win (+1) | Win (+3) | Win (+2) | Win (+4) |
| Balance (₹) | 11 | 14 | 16 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 14 | 16 | 20 |
The above table also indicates that if you lose a bet, your next bet has to restart from 1 unit, which is Rs.100, and this strategy is the secret ingredient that helps you win consistently.
As the motive of this strategy is to win small but to win consistently, I recommend you to bet on anywhere between 4 to 10 rounds and start a fresh game. This refreshes your odds of winning consistently. You should remember that this strategy is designed to decrease the odds of you losing so it pays to remember that the chances of you losing the initial bankroll money of ₹100 is still pretty strong.
With a lot of potential to double down on your losses, the 1-3-2-4 strategy was configured from an earlier 1-3-2-6 strategy conceived in 2006, which went out of practice and fashion and was replaced.
The Straight Forward Strategies
House Way: In this strategy, you’ll be betting on the player, back to back, and as the house edge of winning is higher while betting on the player, that is what you bank on. If you lose a few rounds consecutively, chop one deal by betting on the banker and circle back to betting on the player again.
Martingale: Proposed by Henry Martingale in the 1700s, the martingale strategy is simply betting twice as large as the preceding bet in a series. For instance, if your first bet is ₹200, your next bet will be ₹400, then it is ₹800, ₹160, ₹320, ₹640 and so on.
Encouraging the ‘go big or go home’ attitude, the martingale strategy of playing Baccarat is bold, to say the least, and only suits the aristocrats who gamble for fun.
D’Alembert: Invented by a French mathematician who based this strategy on the equilibrium of betting contests, the D’Alembert system is all about betting the opposite of the outcome of each bet.
In this strategy, you add one chip after every losing bet and remove one chip after every winning bet, and the principle of this system is to make a marginal profit despite losing more than you have won, after around 8 to 10 rounds of betting.
As this strategy will have unpredictable outcomes while playing Baccarat online, and if the probabilities aren’t in your favour, you may end up losing nearly 50 times more money than your initial bankroll. So I suggest you to try this only for a few rounds but do not bet your bottom rupee on it.
Combining the Trifecta of Strategies for the Best Results
After playing Baccarat for years, I wind up by suggesting you to try all the strategies and execute the one that works for you, and as Baccarat has a way of catching your luck off-guard, do not be afraid to switch to a not-so-popular strategy, because that just might work for you.
Combining the Flat + Pattern + 1-3-2-4 strategies (or a combination of any 3 strategies mentioned) can yield the best results and increase your chances of winning.
Do not get carried away by blindly betting on the banker or the player and always be aware of the strategy you are using.
I have consciously mentioned in this write-up that Baccarat is a game of ‘luck’ so I would not recommend you to bank your livelihood on this game. And for players who want to be professional gamblers, there are always options like blackjack and poker which involve skill, strategy and the element of luck as well.
