Back to Baccarat

Back to Baccarat

           My column a few weeks ago about commission-free Baccarat and commission-free Pai Gow Poker prompted a reader to send me an e-mail asking for advice on how to improve his play at Baccarat.  The simple reality is that I could not provide him with any advice.  Baccarat has no strategy.  Sometimes when I say that, it means that there is sort of no strategy.  For example, in Casino War, the only choice the Player can make is whether to go to war when the Player and Dealer card tie.  Mathematically, the Player should always go to war, so in essence there is no strategy.  The Player IS given a choice of what to do, but the choice is always the same, so is there really any strategy?  I'll leave that to the philosophers and people who wonder about trees falling in the forest.

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The Commish

The Commish

            Despite being around casinos since I was about 14 years old, I have to admit that it was only the past decade or so that I learned anything about Pai Gow Poker and Baccarat.  All I knew about Baccarat was that James Bond seemed to like to play it and apparently you play it for a lot of money.  With 007 playing it, I always assumed it was a game a lot like blackjack which relied on a good deal of strategy and potentially card counting, which would be why the suave super spy loved it so much.  Little did I know that it is a game of essentially no strategy, albeit there are some similarities to blackjack.

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The Commish

The Commish

          Despite being around casinos since I was about 14 years old, I have to admit that it was only the past decade or so that I learned anything about Pai Gow Poker and Baccarat.  All I knew about Baccarat was that James Bond seemed to like to play it and apparently you play it for a lot of money.  With 007 playing it, I always assumed it was a game a lot like blackjack which relied on a good deal of strategy and potentially card counting, which would be why the suave super spy loved it so much.  Little did I know that it is a game of essentially no strategy, albeit there are some similarities to blackjack.

Read More