Card Counting

When a player decides he wants to beat a casino fair and square, the first attempt is almost always ordinary blackjack card counting. There are many reasons for this obsessive misdirection, not least of which is the sheer bulk of movies, books and websites devoted to the topic.

Over/Under (O/U) is a new table game that has recently been approved and is starting to get domestic placements.

In this post I considered ordinary blackjack card counting (BJCC) for six decks. The purpose of that post was to compare BJCC to card counting the various side bets for the six-deck shoe game. This post presents the analysis for the two-deck game.

Baccarat card counting is a hopeless endeavor. That doesn't mean that I can't develop better card counting systems or run more accurate simulations than I have in the past. This post improves upon earlier results I first presented in December, 2011 (see this post).

(flim′flam′) noun 1. nonsense; rubbish; humbug (ref. Webster's New World Dictionary)

Baccarat insurance is a side bet that players can make during the play of a hand of baccarat. This side bet is really an aggregate of sides bets, some of which can be made based on the first two cards exposed, and some of which can be made later during the play of the hand. Each of these side bets has its own separate wagering rules and payout.

One of my informal rules for this blog is that I don’t consider ordinary blackjack card counting (BJCC). Any easy Google search reveals myriad resources that give the minutia of every aspect of BJCC. At least three generations of APs have dedicated themselves to this game. For my purposes, the question is: how does BJCC stack up against card counting blackjack side bets?

The “Easy Six” (ES) baccarat side bet pays 6-to-1 if either the Player hand or Banker hand wins on six points, or if a tie occurs on six points.  Otherwise, the ES wager loses.

I first considered if the Dragon 7 baccarat side bet was susceptible to a card counting methodology in mid-2011 when it was exclusively a proprietary side bet owned by DEQ that was associated with the commission free baccarat variant EZ Baccarat.

The Dragon Side Bet for EZ Baccarat is simple to describe. This side bet pays 40-to-1 if the dealer’s three-card total of 7 beats the player, otherwise the bet loses. In September, 2011, I realized that this side bet was vulnerable to a card counting methodology of advantage play. I worked over the next few days to evaluate the appropriate systems and their value.

The Dragon Bonus (DB) wager is arguably the most common and popular side bet for baccarat on the market. DB allows the gambler to not only wager that either the Banker side or Player side will win, but that the winning side will crush the losing side by a significant number of points.  The larger the margin of victory, the larger the payout for the DB wager.

While looking around for what to do next, I decided to visit one of my favorite sources for interesting baccarat side bets: the website ukcasinotablegames.info . There I found the “Colour Match” (CM) baccarat side bet.

The Natural 9 (NAT9) side bet is the wager that the Player hand or Banker hand will be a natural 9. NAT9 is actually two different side bets, as the wager can separately be made that the Banker hand will be a natural 9 and that the Player hand will be a natural 9.  Similarly, the Natural 8 (NAT8) side bet is the wager that the Player hand or Banker hand will be a natural 8.

At G2E (2013) last week, I came across a baccarat side bet I had not seen before at the Galaxy Gaming booth, called “Lucky Win” (LW). The side bet can be made on either the Player hand or the Banker hand and it pays when the winning hand totals 0, 1, 2, 3, or 5.

Baccarat side bets are often named after exotic or mythical animals. SHFL has the Dragon Bonus side bet. There are the Dragon 7 and Panda 8 side bets to EZ Baccarat.