Baccarat

In the original Casino Royale (both Ian Fleming’s novel as well as the 1953 film), James Bond is seen to be playing Baccarat. In fact, he is seen playing the game in subsequent novels as well, and it has been said that it is 007’s favourite game.

Baccarat is believed to have originated in Italy, and then introduced in France by the then-king, Charles VIII. It is mostly played in casinos, and as with most casino games, has several variations. There are 3 main variants of baccarat in existence today, chemin-de-fer, banque, and banco punto.

Players of the game rely on luck, and there isn’t much skill involved. For this reason, it is a popular game in casinos, each player hoping to “strike it big” that night. The highest score a player can receive is 9. Number cards are scored at face value, while tens and face cards are worth zero points. In hands where the total of the cards is higher than ten, the tens place is ignored, giving a final total of 9 or less. A zero hand is known as Baccarat, and as such this game is the only one of its kind to be named after its lowest hand.

Hand Reading Skills

In order to make fundamentally correct plays, it is important to have some idea about what you are up against. So how do you put your opponent on a hand? Simple: pay attention. Whether you are in the current poker hand or not, you need to pay attention to the action at all times in order to learn what your opponents’ tendencies are. By simply watching the aciton, you will likely be able to find the answers to the following questions:

On the Pre-flop
1. What hands will opponents raise with?
2. What hands will they call with?
3. Do they play conservatively or loosely from early position?
4. How often do they defend their blind to a raise?
5. Do they raise a lot of hands, or are they on the careful side?

On the Post-Flop
1. What type of hands will they check raise with?
2. Do they play draws aggressively or passively at a poker table?
3. Do they slow-play made hands?
4. Do they ever bluff in a poker game?
5. Do they fold often on the flop, or will they call all the way to the river?

These are ten questions that you will learn the answers to simply by paying attention and making mental notes. And the more you play, the better you will get at it.

Baccarat

Have you ever heard of the “Gentleman’s game”? Right, it is the reputation of Baccarat which is a very popular casino game all over the world.

People believe that Baccarat has been introduced to France from Italy during the region of Charles VIII of France (1483-1498), which is similar to Faro and to Basset. There are three accepted variants of the game: baccarat chemin de fer (railway), baccarat banque (a deux tableaux) and punto banco (or North American baccarat).

Although being not very good at this casino game, I like playing it and I still remember when I was a kid I saw a film named “King of Gambler” (star by Andy Lau) which gave me a very deep impression, in which he mastered all the gambling tricks and at that time I really admired him…

The valuation of hands in Baccarat is quite different from other poker games like Texas Hold’em so we should pay special attention to it. In Baccarat, cards 2-9 are worth face value and 10’s and face cards (J Q K) are with zero, and Aces are worth 1 point. Players calculate their score by taking the sum of all cards modulo 10, meaning that after adding the value cards the tens digit is ignored.

Anyway, have a try then you will get everything of its essence…