Top Baccarat Strategies: How to Improve Baccarat Odds

Magda Olbea

Casino expert

Updated:
Top Baccarat Strategies: How to Improve Baccarat Odds

Learn about baccarat odds and winning strategies in a comprehensive expert way. Here are three worthwhile baccarat strategies that you can easily apply.

Baccarat basics guide – how to play the game

baccarat basics

Before diving into expert baccarat strategies, any gambler should understand the rules of the game and the underlying baccarat odds.

Casino baccarat is a bank comparing card game. In short, this fact means that you play against the croupier, not other gamblers and that its main system hinges on comparing hand values between the two sides.

Card Values and Winning Hands

The side whose hand has the highest value wins. While it sounds simple, the card scorings further complicate the situation.

Card Values

  • 2 – 9 cards have the value inscribed on them.
  • 10 and face cards are null.
  • Aces amount to 1.

Additionally, if your total amounts to 10, your score is 0. If it goes over, you must subtract 10 from your sum.

This game fact changes the dynamic and underlying baccarat strategies entirely.

Available Bets

One of the essential baccarat tips is that your intention is not obtaining a winning hand, but rather wagering on the correct outcome.

As a participant, you can place your wagers on three main possibilities: the player’s hand wins, the banker’s hand wins, or they hit a tie.

Thus, all baccarat strategies for a winning round have you correctly guessing which side will come out on top.

baccarat strategies guide

What are the Baccarat Payouts?

  • Player Bet – 1:1. You recover your bet and received an additional equal amount.
  • Banker Bet – 0.95:1. Upon success, you receive your initial stake, and 95% of its value extra. The remaining 5% is called a banker commission.
  • Tie Bet – 8:1. It has the highest payout, corresponding to the poorest baccarat odds.

You should already intuit that bet payouts generally reflect the baccarat odds of success. The banker stake is the only unbalanced one, as the 5% commission results in a smaller return and adds to the house edge.

If you placed a banker of player bet and the round ended in a tie, the result is a push. You receive your staked chips back and recommence the game.

Baccarat Tips: Avoid the Tie Bet

Here is the first building block for all baccarat strategies. While the 8:1 payout is attractive, the baccarat odds of success of a tie bet are 9.83%. The probability corresponds to an enormous 14.36% house edge for staking on a tie.

The Essential for all Baccarat Strategies: Baccarat Odds

Minimizing the house edge and basing your play on constant small returns is how to win at baccarat. Thus, risky wagers, including side bets are not recommended.

Your decisions should be limited to staking your chips on the banker’s or the player’s hand.

The baccarat odds for the banker winning are 45.85%, corresponding to a 1.06% house edge. Naturally, the 5% commission adds to the house advantage, despite the high baccarat odds. A winning player hand will come up with a 44.62% probability. The player stake has a 1.36% house edge.

Thus, when deciding on your winning baccarat strategies, you should only take into account these two wagers.

Bet on Banker, it is Simple and Effective

This is essential to all baccarat strategies hinges on the small house advantage of staking on the banker’s hand.

The House Edge Argument

The 1.06% house edge translates into a return to player percentage of 98.94%. For every $100 wagered on the banker’s hand, you would recover $98.94 on average.

The result is slightly better than the player’s bet which has a 98.76% return to player percentage.

Possible Outcome Breakdown

Ties return your stake, thus neither advancing nor hindering your payout accumulation. This is another reason to dismiss the result from our baccarat strategies.

We can calculate the expected value by summing all the probabilities times the outcome results.

  • You lose your bet when the player wins
  • You earn $0.95 over the returned $1 when the banker wins.
  • Your stake is returned for a tie.
Expected value: Profit

You make $0.95 in profits and lose $1 for when the baccarat odds are against you. The expected value for your profit is:

$0.95 * 45.87% + ( – $1) * 44.65% + $0 * 9.48% = – $0.0107

This is the doing of the 5% commission. Otherwise, for making a $1 profit for banker stakes, the expected profit value is $0.0122 per $1 staked. This change would make the bet on banker-based baccarat strategies guaranteed moneymakers.

Expected Value: Total Returns

We consider the following. A banker win returns $1.95 in total, while a loss subtracts $1. Thus, the expected value for returns is:

$1.95 * 0.4587 + ( – $1) * 0.4465 + $0 * 0.0948 = $0.4479

Thus, for every staked $100, you would end up with $44.8 at the end of the play.

The following baccarat strategies, however, balance out the spending better.

Pros and cons of playing Baccarat

Pros and cons of playing Baccarat

You may devise the best baccarat betting strategies. However, if the game does not permit for a considerable lowering of the house edge, it would be worthless. Here you can see how the table game compares to other gambling activities.

Pros

  • Simplicity – The baccarat strategies have an edge in that they apply to a very comprehensive game. The rules and underlying probabilities are simple to grasp.
  • Popularity – You are sure to find several tables in all offline and online casinos. While not all options are the same, its extensive availability ensures that you will find a fitting game.
  • Baccarat Odds are Good – Relevant bets have a house edge of 1.06% and 1.36%, which is considerably lower than that of other table games. This statistical advantage allows for several baccarat strategies. Perhaps, only online blackjack Canada, played with basic strategy can prove better.

Cons

  • Lack of Atmosphere – One of the best aspects of a table game is the social side. Unfortunately, this exact element is more restrained in the online environment. Nonetheless, you may use the lack of distraction to focus on your baccarat strategies.
  • Returns are Low – You may find how to win at baccarat, but there is no sure approach of generating huge payouts. We also generally advise to stake smaller sums on more secure bets.

Three Baccarat strategies you can start using today

We will share three easy-to-use baccarat winning strategies. You can learn them in a few minutes, master them in a couple of play sessions and receive better overall returns.

Three Baccarat Strategies You Can Start Using Today

1.     The D’Alembert system

The D’Alembert system is one of the easier systems to add to your baccarat strategies. All you have to do is select a base unit, which should be the value of a single casino chip. Thus, if you’re playing with $1 tokens, your base unit is set to 1.

D’Alembert System in Action

  • You place your unit stake., say, $1.
  • When losing, you increase by one unit. Thus, you move to staking $2.
  • When winning, you decrease the stake by one, except when you hit the minimum.

D’Alembert with Banker Bet Baccarat Strategies

The likelihood of a banker’s hand winning is relatively close to 50%. This is ideal for progressive betting baccarat strategies.

An eventual win would cover for past losses and add one more unit to your bankroll. Say, you arrive at betting $5 in the progression. Thus, you lost $4 in previous rounds. A subsequent win would recoup your $5 stake, and add $4.75 in extra payouts.

Thus, even with the commission, you cover the $4 loss and obtain $0.75 in profits.

Historical Background

Created by the famous French theorist Jean le Rond d’Alembert, this progressive system is designed to prevent you from making reckless bets and losing everything quickly while also allowing you to recoup the bets you lost.

2.     The Fibonacci system

Who thought that you could use your maths classes for baccarat strategies? The essentials are that, on a losing streak, you progress to the second follow-up number of the Fibonacci sequence:

If you start at $1, then the progression is $1, $2, $3, $5, $8, $13, $21, $34 $55, and so on. Each entry is the sum of the two previous numbers.

The System’s Idea

You go on and lose six times. This is very unlikely, but relevant as an example. Thus, you have lost $20. Thus, on the next round, you wager $13. If you win, you receive either $12.35 or $13, depending on the stake. This is one of the baccarat strategies that work with both bets. You still are $7.65 / $7 in the hole. The next wager is two positions down in the sequence, i.e., $5, and say that you win. Then, you are only $2.65 or $2 short of breaking even. You go down two positions and stake $2. If it is a win, you are even or $0.65 short of it. A follow-up win would result in $1 or $0.35 in profits.

3.     The Martingale Strategy

This is one of the baccarat strategies that will bring in profits, with some caveats.

The system still uses a betting progression. You choose an initial stake and every time you lose, you double the bet. When winning, you revert to the first amount. As simple as that.

The Dynamics of the Martingale

Your Initial stake was $1, and you have lost ten times, highly unlikely, but still possible.

Your next bet is $512. The sum may sound egregious, considering previous losses. However, if you win, you have covered all losses, that amounted to $511 and received $1 extra.

The Idea Behind Martingale

The previous losses of the progression will sum up to the last bet’s double, plus the initial stake. Thus, every losing streak and one winning round combination will only result in profit equal to your initial stake.

The Martingale is one of the mathematically backed baccarat winning strategies. However, it falters since it theoretically requires an infinite bankroll (for infinite profits) and fails when exceeding the table limits.

In conclusion

You have all the facts to try your hand with one of these baccarat strategies.

Our team of casino specialists recommends choosing a baccarat bonus from our site as these will help with experimenting with these baccarat betting strategies. Note however that all sure-profit approaches have their limits and cannot guarantee constant revenue. They will, nonetheless, help your gameplay in the long run.