Baccarat Systems

I just love to find out great tips and shortcuts that make my life easier. Baccarat systems advertise themselves as a great diviner of the way to win Baccarat. Systems assure you that there is no need to track hundreds of numbers, memorize charts and graphs, and divide millions of complex computations in your head. All of the complex math has been taken care of for you by “genius” mathematicians and so-called Baccarat “gurus”.

Baccarat is a card game that has been a great deal of fun for literally thousands of years. After travelling the world over, there have been some significant rule changes depending on the country in which you are playing. The version that is played in North America is called “Punto Banco”, or North American Baccarat. It is a simpler version compared to its European cousins, but for its simplicity, you trade some of the skill.

So how can you beat this game? You can study the strategies and see that most experts’ experiments show there is only a negligible advantage of implementing complex card-counting. Some players enjoy watching for streaks, and riding the streaks to a small advantage over the house. All in all, baccarat’s house advantage for the Banker is 1.06 and 1.24 for the Player. This is with no card counting, no systems, just straight up and these are not the worst odds in the house. So, we still want to make the odds better, right?

Baccarat Systems that are available crunch all of the best mathematical equations into a neat little package. Frequencies, grouping, streaks, and runs are all predicted and have been promised to give you a payout at over 5 units per shoe in some cases. The sites that offer these systems are impressive enough posting the resumes and biographies of notable engineers and mathematicians turned gambling coach. Do these systems work?

Encyclopedia Britannica even talks about the fallacy that these systems are based on, called “The Gambler’s Fallacy” or “The Monte Carlo Fallacy”. To paraphrase the encyclopedia, “these fallacies assume that each play is not independent of the rest and that a series of outcomes should be balanced in the short run by other possibilities. Systems are invented based on this fallacy and casinos encourage the use of such systems that neglect the strict rules of probability and independent plays”.

The expert at “Wizard of Odds” loves to taunt the inventors of systems and offers a wager on any system that could profit over one billion simulated hands on the computer. No one was even brave enough to accept the challenge. Nevertheless, there are some people who love to play their system.

If you enjoy your system, then don’t expect odds much better than if you tracked a streak. You can track a streak for free, and have fun trying to make the best of it. A system will cost some money and you can determine for your money, if that makes the game more fun for you.

So next time you consider spending money on a gambling system for Baccarat, also pick up some snake oil while you are at it! Flip a coin, do some math or try a system, baccarat is a game of chance so just have fun with it.