How to Maximize Your Winnings at Baccarat

You might have already guessed it! It’s called taking advantage of the streaks when they come.

The most elementary of betting systems to take advantage of a streak occurring on either player or bank is to simply follow the shoe. It seems about as silly as you can imagine, but it makes some sense when you think about it.

If the first winning hand is player, then your next bet is on the player side. If the player wins again, you stay with the player for your next bet and so on. If the bank wins that third hand, you immediately switch over to the bank side and start looking for a streak with the banker.

The only way you get hurt here is when the shoe chops over a period of time between player and bank, which will prevent you from catching a streak, and when it goes really bad, you will find it difficult to win two hands in a row. But patience and perseverance will, most of the time, get you through these negative chops.

Progressive Betting

The next thing to consider is your money management.

When you do catch a good streak, you don’t want to sit there repeatedly betting one unit per hand. If you did that over a streak of ten winning hands you would only win what you lost over a streak of ten losing hands, which would completely defeat the purpose of the whole strategy.

So in order to maximize the streak we need to implement a progressive betting-style that increases as does the number of hands you win in a row.

If you want to be conservative, you can play a 1-2-2-3 or a 1-2-2-4 progression, and stay at four units until the streak ends. If you want to be bolder and look to make a score, you can play a 1-3-2-6 and revert back to one unit after four wins in a row, or go with a 1-3-2-6-6 and revert back to the single unit after five wins in a row.

The exact winning-progression system you choose depends on how aggressive you want to be. However, in all cases, you must go back to the single unit when your streak ends.

Card Counting

Some people wonder about the possibility of counting cards in baccarat, and whether or not tie bets or proposition bets can be beaten by doing so.

Many people have studied baccarat the way blackjack has been studied and some have even published baccarat card-counting systems. I have tested and even endorsed some of them as they actually can give the baccarat player a minute advantage over the casino when using them.

But the problem is that there is a lot of work involved with relatively little payoff. Maintaining an adjusted true count takes much more effort than in blackjack because you cannot use a simple plus-minus count. Couple that with having to remember the actual numbers of each card value in the deck, and it really gets overloading. So the bottom line is that it is too much work for too little reward.

As far as the tie-bet goes, the house edge of 14.36% is far too prohibitive to try using a counting system. In fact, I would consider the tie-bet a sucker bet, much like hard-way bets in craps.

There are, however, some proposition bets that can actually be beaten by keeping track of certain-value cards in the deck. This appears to be the case with two bets especially popular in Canada; the Dragon Bet and the Panda-Bet. If you search online you will find card-counting for these and other baccarat proposition-bets that may be effective. However, beware that casinos offering these types of bets are constantly changing their dealing procedures and limits to curb a smart baccarat player´s advantage. We also suggest reading up on baccarat side bets before attempting such advanced strategies.

Conclusion

Getting the most out of baccarat is a simple matter of knowing the odds of its bets and relying on some basic principles of the game.

The best way to reliably win as much as possible is simply to repeatedly make the Banker bet because it offers highest RTP among available options. The only exceptions are a handful of rare side bets, but beginners are advised to stay away from those.

Moreover, a positive progression system can allow you to increase profits by leveraging baccarat’s trait of having common streaks of similar outcomes. Though this fact won’t help you overcome the house advantage, it can help you win as much as possible in the short term.

Read Also:

• How Live Dealer Baccarat Works
• Top 5 Live Baccarat Tips
• Guide to Baccarat Strategy
• Why High Rollers Love Baccarat
• Overview of Baccarat Variations in Online Casinos