Card games are a mainstay of any self-respecting casino, and Baccarat is right up there with the best of them. However, card games have always been a touchy subject with punters – are they all about luck, or is there actual skill involved?
We'll give you the short answer right away – there is no real skill involved with baccarat. Having experience helps to a degree because knowledgeable players know how to minimize the house's advantage by making the right decisions. However, when it comes down to it, you cannot influence the outcome of Baccarat in any way.
Think of it this way – some bets are better than others, but all of them are at a disadvantage to the casino.
However, many players do enjoy playing Baccarat despite its unpredictable nature. It's fast-paced, exciting, and still offers a narrow house edge when compared to most other common gambling games.
In this article, we're going to take a closer look at the rules and math behind baccarat to explain why it's fully based on luck.
The Rules of Baccarat
There is nothing complicated whatsoever in regard to how Baccarat was designed. It's safe to say that it's one of the easiest games to play in terms of casino card games.
The basic premise of the game is that two hands are dealt. One is known as the Player hand and the other the Banker hand, and a series of playing cards are then dealt out to each of those two hands.
Your goal is to try and guess which hand is going to have a total value of cards closer to nine than the other hand. Importantly, only the first digit of any total counts – a total score of 16, for instance, only counts as 6.
Two cards are dealt to each hand. However, there is also a special third-card rule that dictates when and how one or both of the hands can also draw a third card.
You can place a bet on either of those two hands. If you win, you get 1:1. If the score ends up being a Tie, everyone with a Player or Banker bet gets half of their stake back. You can also bet on the the Tied Hand bet, though it's a bad idea because of the huge house edge.
There are more tidbits to talk about, but the point of this article isn't to dive into the details. Our point is that at no point does the player receive any useful information that can help him predict the result of a future round.
Why Is There No Skill Inovlved
All bets are placed before the first card is drawn, so you can't predict how strong a hand will be. Despite common misconceptions, the results of previous rounds are also irrelevant, which doesn't leave you with a lot of options.
Finally, you can't track or count cards effectively for two reasons.
First of all, online baccarat is played with 8 decks per shoe. That's too many cards to reliably count. It could be theoretically possible after enough cards are drawn and discarded if not for our second reason – deck penetration.
Deck penetration in card games refers to how many cards are drawn from a shoe before it's shuffled. With most baccarat games, the dealers shuffle after only a third (or sometimes half) of the shoe.
That leaves too many cards in the shoe for players to calculate the chances of drawing any of them, which makes card counting essentially impossible.
Payout Odds and House Advantage
Each casino may offer you a different set of payout odds on the tied hand bet. Don't fret too much over it – this bet is always unequivocally bad, so it's not worth using even with the best odds.
However, Player and Banker payouts to winning players are going to be the same at all online casino sites – 1:1. Although most tables implement a 5% commission on Banker bets, this depends on table rules rather than casino rules.
As such, we'll focus on these two wagers. After all, they have the best RTP and are statistically the most common. However, both still have a house advantage, and we'll explain why.
The important thing to remember is that Banker and Player bets don't really have a 50% chance of winning. Instead, Banker wins 45.8% of all rounds, while Player wins 44.6%. The rest of them are ties.
In other words, the casino pays out 1:1 as if the chances of winning were 50%, even though they aren't. This discrepancy is called the house edge – on average, the casino will pay less money than it takes in.
For example, if the odds really were 50%, repeatedly betting on Banker would mean you would on average never win and never lose. You would win half of all rounds and double your money every round, but lose the other half so it all evens out.
That's why the source of the house edge is the rule that states you lose half your Player or Banker bet stake if the result is a Tie. If, for example, all of your stake was paid back, the game would have no house advantage whatsoever.
On the flip side, if the casino would keep your full stake, the house edge would be double what it is now, so count your blessings.
Conclusion
When it comes down to it, there really are no casino games that actually allow the player to control their fate. There are some exceptions such as poker or blackjack, but even those don't allow you to actually reliably beat the casino – that's a topic for another day, though.
The outcome of every baccarat round is completely unpredictable and random – or as close to random as possible. Even if you keep track of which cards are played through, you can't really know which 4-6 cards are coming next, so you can't predict the outcome.
This means that baccarat is completely chance-based. However, there are still ways to minimize the house advantage. Namely, only ever betting on the Banker gives you the lowest house advantage possible. However, there's still a house advantage, so even this minor bit of skill won't allow you to win in the long term.
