• How Do You Play Baccarat
• How To Count Cards In Blackjack
• How To Count Cards In Baccarat

Here are some more rules to help you ace a baccarat game: If either the player or banker is dealt a total of eight or nine, both the player and banker stand. If the player’s total is five or less, then the player will receive another card. Otherwise, the player will stand. Starting with a new shoe allows you to count cards and make decisions more effectively. Add a value of 1 to your tally when an ace, 2 or 3 appear on the table. Add a value of 2 to your tally when a 4 appears on the table. Conversely, subtract a value of 1 from your tally when an a 5, 7 or 8 appear on the table. The Mechanics of Card Counting Baccarat When there's a new shoe or deck used, you start over with a count of zero. When an ace, two or three is dealt from the deck, you'll add one to that count, which indicates an increased chance of switching to the player bet. Fours are worth double, so you'll add two to the count when these cards are dealt. The advantage of baccarat card counting is the insight you can gain to make more informed decisions on your placed bets. A Basic Guide on How to Count Cards in Baccarat. The most profitable way to effectively reduce the house advantage in baccarat card counting are when playing baccarat at a.

You’re probably aware that you can count cards in blackjack and win money. Gamblers have been beating blackjack for decades through card counting.

How Do You Play Baccarat

However, baccarat card counting is far more low profile. The reason why is because it doesn’t generate many profits.

But you can make a fair amount of money when counting with a certain baccarat side bet. I’ll discuss more on how you can use this method later. First, though, I’d like to discuss why regular baccarat counting doesn’t result in big winnings.

The Problem With Standard Baccarat Card Counting

Some gamblers are shocked upon finding out that blackjack isn’t the only game that can be beaten through card counting. You can also earn long-term profits by counting baccarat games as well.

Of course, you need to learn the proper strategy before you’re able to make profits. If you put in the dedication, though, you can beat baccarat. However, there’s a big catch involved. You’re not going to make much money at all!

Maybe you still wouldn’t mind counting for fun once and a while if it were easy. However, counting this game is just as difficult as doing so with blackjack.

In short, you’re wasting time by counting cards in baccarat. You might as well just sit back, relax, and place the banker bet (1.06% house edge) every time.

Welcome to the Dragon Side Bet

You can see that baccarat isn’t a profitable game for advantage players (APs) under normal circumstances. No respectable AP will waste their time with earning $0.70 or less.

However, the Dragon side bet offers an interesting opportunity to make larger profits. I’ll discuss how you can count with the Dragon wager later.

First, though, I’d like to cover more on how this bet works. It features the following rules:

• You wager on whether the banker or player will beat the other side by a certain point margin.
• The banker or player must win with a “natural” (eight or nine on first two cards).
• Bets on larger margins of victory deliver bigger payouts.

The common pay table for both the player and banker side is as follows:

• Win by 9 = 30:1 payout
• Win by 8 = 10:1
• Win by 7 = 6:1
• Win by 6 = 4:1
• Win by 5 = 2:1
• Win by 4 = 1:1
• Anything else = Loss

Counting Cards With the Dragon Side Bet

You can see how the Dragon side wager works. Now, I’ll cover how it can help you make profits with card counting.

The first thing to realize about baccarat is that most casinos allow very deep deck penetration. In most cases, the dealer makes it almost to the end of an eight-deck shoe.

This deck penetration is significant when considering that you stand to win more money as a counter upon seeing additional cards. After all, your count will be more accurate towards the end of a shoe.

Casinos don’t allow this much penetration in order to stop blackjack card counters. But they have no problem doing so with baccarat when considering that normal counting methods don’t result in much profit.

However, this extra deck penetration can definitely help you win with side bets. You just need to know how to do so with the Dragon wager.

As mentioned above, player and banker dragon bets carry 2.65% and 9.37% house advantages, respectively. Therefore, you want to bet on the player’s side when counting.

Dr. Eliot Jacobson, a renowned gambling mathematician, has run the numbers on counting the Dragon bet. He notes that you want a shoe that’s rich in sevens, eights, and nines.

These cards increase the chances of your chosen Dragon side getting a natural. They should be assigned a point value of -1 when they come out of the shoe (bad for you).

Meanwhile, twos and threes are the worst cards for helping form naturals. Therefore, you want as few of these cards as possible. They should draw a point value of +1 when they’re dealt.

As with blackjack card counting, you’re looking for a positive count before raising bets. Upon determining a positive count, you should raise your wagers to capitalize.

What Kind of Edge Can You Gain With This AP Strategy?

The nice thing about counting cards in baccarat is that you don’t need to worry about much, if any, heat from the casino. Gambling establishments will let you count this game all day.

That said, you have a decent chance of walking away with profits at the end of the day when everything goes right. However, you shouldn’t expect to get rich with this strategy.

But this profit rate assumes that you get optimal deck penetration, where the dealer only leaves 14 cards undealt out of an eight-deck shoe.

Assuming the dealer places the cut card further up, then your profits drop. Here’s how much you can look forward to earning based on where the cut card is placed:

• Cut card at 14 cards = $9.09 per hour
• Cut card at 26 cards = $6.75
• Cut card at 52 cards = $3.99
• Cut card at 104 cards = $1.50

Is Counting Cards With the Dragon Bet Worthwhile?

How To Count Cards In Blackjack

Counting the Dragon bet offers around the same profits as you’d earn when playing full-pay Deuces Wild with a quarter denomination. The latter delivers between $7 and $9 per hour under ideal conditions.

As an AP, you can earn up to a maximum of $9 hourly with the Dragon bet. Therefore, you can look forward to a decent profit when considering that casino games normally take money from you in the long run.

But is it worthwhile to actually go through all the trouble to make $9 each hour? I certainly wouldn’t say so.

You can make this same hourly wage with much simpler jobs. Dishwashers and convenience store workers earn this same amount. Why then, would you want to do something that’s much riskier just to make the same amount with a less stressful job?

The only reasonable answer is if you view winning at baccarat as a challenge and want to profit off your gambling hobby. In this case, making $9 each hour in the casino isn’t so bad.

However, you certainly shouldn’t quit your day job to capitalize on the Dragon bet. This opportunity just doesn’t offer enough money to make it worth your time.

Conclusion

Regular baccarat card counting is a complete wash. It calls on you to diligently count cards in pursuit of making pennies each hour.

But standard baccarat counting isn’t the only way to make money with this game. You can earn bigger profits through the Dragon side bet.

When you count and bet on the Dragon wager in the right manner, you can make upwards of $9 per hour. Much of your winnings, though, depend upon where the cut card is placed.

That said, you can make $9 every hour with ideal deck penetration. But you probably still don’t find this amount to be worth the trouble of counting cards in baccarat.

How To Count Cards In Baccarat

• Appendices
• Baccarat Analysis
• Miscellaneous

Introduction

In either blackjack or baccarat a good first step in developing a card counting strategy is to determine the effect of removing any given card from the game. The following table shows the number of banker, player, and tie wins resulting from the removing of one card in an 8-deck shoe. The card removed is indicated in the image--leftolumn.

Number

The next table puts these number is some perspective by indicating the probability of a banker, player, and tie win according to the card removed.

Probability

The next table shows the house edge of each bet by card removed.

House Edge

The next table shows the effect on the house edge of each bet according to the card removed. A negative number indicates removal is bad for the player, positive indicates removal is good.

House Edge

The next table multiplies the above numbers by ten million.

Count Adjustment

To adapt this information to a card counting strategy, the player should start with three running counts of zero. As each card is seen as it leaves the shoe the player should add the point values of that card to each running count. For example if the first card to be played is an 8 then the three running counts would be: banker=-502, player=533, tie=6543. Of course the player does not have to keep a running track of all three counts. In fact the point values for the banker and player are nearly opposite of each other. A high running count for the banker would mean a corresponding low count for the player, and vise versa.

In order for any given bet to become advantageous the player should divide the running count by the ratio of cards left in the deck to get the true count. A bet hits zero house edge at the following true counts:

• Banker: 105791
• Player: 123508
• Tie: 1435963

Assuming you were able to actually play this strategy perfectly you would notice that the true counts seldom passed the point of zero house edge. The next table shows the ratio of hands played, based on a sample of 100 million, in which the true count passes the break even points above. The image--leftolumn indicates the ratio of cards dealt before the cards are shuffled.

Positive Expectation

The final table indicates the expected revenue per 100 bets and a $1000 wager every time a positive expected value occured. Please remember that this table assumes the player is able to keep a perfect count and the casino is not going to mind the player only making a bet once every 475 hands of less.

Expected Profit

I hope this section shows that for all practical purposes baccarat is not a countable game. For more information on a similar experiment I would recomment The Theory of Blackjack by Peter A. Griffin. Although the book is mainly devoted to blackjack he has part of a chapter titled 'Can Baccarat Be Beaten?' on pages 216 to 223. Griffin concludes by saying that even in Atlantic City, with a more liberal shuffle point than Las Vegas, the player betting $1000 in positive expectation hands can expect to profit 70 cents an hour.

For your further consideration I would recommend this baccarat odds calculator. You can put in any deck composition and it will give the house edge on all three bets.

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Go to baccarat appendix 7