The Best Baccarat Strategy – A Guide to Winning Baccarat Systems
If you are looking for the best baccarat strategy options to help you minimize the house edge and give you the optimal chance of winning, then you’ve come to the right place. Check out some of the topics in the box below and skip to the one that interests you or read on to find out all about the various playing and betting baccarat strategies.
On this page, you’ll learn about the possible ways to approach playing baccarat, with a focus on the betting strategies that you can use in order to help you. The whole aim is to show you how to win baccarat. The one thing to say is that baccarat is a game of chance and no strategy will guarantee that you win or that you make money.
Baccarat Strategy Explained – How to Win at Baccarat
Baccarat is a popular casino game all around the world, being especially popular in continental European casinos. It is often associated particularly with Monte Carlo because of the game’s appearance in James Bond novels and films. Mastering the basics is pretty easy, but many spend years hoping to find a perfect way to play that yields consistent results. The simple but disappointing truth is that there is no perfect baccarat strategy. Instead, there are numerous betting systems that can help to increase your returns.
Understanding Baccarat Odds & How They Impact Bets
Even though baccarat is pretty simple, it can seem a little complicated to figure out what the best choices can be at any given time. Generally, there are only three bets that you can choose to make: on the banker’s hand, on the player’s hand or on a tie. So, calculating which will give the best returns overall is actually a simple case of probability, rather than anything more involved. Let’s have a look at each in turn.
The Banker Bet
This bet tends to popular choice when it comes to winning strategies. It is estimated that the banker bet will win about 50% of the time, which is the main reason why the house often charges a 5% commission when you select it. The payout for the banker bet is always 1:1. Do not confuse the banker bet with the house or the dealer. The name is simply supposed to symbolize an entity separate from the game.
The Player Bet
The player bet is the opposite to the banker bet and is considering to be more useful if you want to utilize a particular betting system like a Martingale or a Paroli. The player bet payouts are different depending on the variant of baccarat you are playing. One of the more common payouts is 1:1. So while the player bet may have , it stands to be far more lucrative.
The Tie Bet
A player that bets on a tie is betting on the next outcome between the player and the dealer being a draw – hence it is named the tie bet. Draws in any card games can happen but are very difficult to predict. Because of this, the payouts are very enticing with some variants offering 8:1 and 9:1 payouts on a draw.
Using Betting Systems in Baccarat
The idea of betting systems is twofold. Firstly, to make your decision-making process easy and therefore to avoid rash choices. You can also use betting strategies to to try and reduce the house edge. There are a number of different ways to approach these two goals. In an even-odds bet like with BANKER or PLAYER bets in baccarat, there are three types that are common to adopt. Read the following sections to find out what they are and see some example baccarat betting strategies.
Positive Progression Systems
Positive progressive betting strategies are those that increase the bet each time that you win a hand of baccarat. These aim to maximize the profits that you can make during a streak of wins. This is in contrast to the way that negative progressives work. Check out the most commonly used positive progressive baccarat strategies below.
Paroli
The Paroli system is the simplest positive progressive strategy that you can employ. Whenever you win a hand, you double your bet for the next hand. Once you have won three hands in a row, the system ends, and you start at your original bet again. If you lose a round, you also stop the system and return to the original amount staked.
Parlay
For this system, you use the winnings from previous hands to increase your bets. When you win a hand, you leave the winnings on the table. This means that you bet the last round’s profit plus your normal wager. In a winning streak, the profits can grow quickly, but the player must be cautious as losses are not cancelled out.
1-3-2-6
This is another progressive betting system that involves multiplying your bet after each win, however there is a certain pattern to follow. As you might have guessed it, it’s 1, 3, 2, 6. So for the second bet, stake 3x your original bet, then 2x your original bet and finally 6x your initial stake.
Oscar’s Grind
This baccarat betting strategy is also known as Hoyle’s Press and a couple of other names. When you win a hand, increase your bet. You should do so by a factor of 1x your initial bet. Keep doing this until you have made an overall profit equal to your original bet and then start at the beginning again.
Negative Progression Systems
If the thought of chasing bigger profits makes you nervous, given that you don’t have a chance to make up for losses, then perhaps negative progressives are more up your street. These aim to cancel out losses and return a profit. However, it is worth noting that all negative progression baccarat strategies can put you into very risky financial situations.
Martingale
Possibly the most well-known strategy to use for even-odds betting like in baccarat, the Martingale system is very simple to use. After every loss, you simply double your bet until you record a win. This means that any losses will be recouped from a single win, and you will have a profit of the same as your initial bet.
Labouchere
A little more complicated than the Martingale system, Labouchere baccarat betting system requires you to decide on a profit margin before you begin play. You then have to increase and decrease bets based on wins and losses until you reach that figure.
D’Alembert
This system is a little bit of a compromise of the Martingale system, making it a less aggressive baccarat betting strategy. After each loss, you add your initial bet amount to your next wager. With every win, you decrease it by this much. This helps to avoid massive bets that can happen in Martingale.
Fibonacci
If you remember your high school maths classes, then you might well be familiar with this famous number sequence. For the Fibonacci baccarat betting system, you increase your wager with each loss according to the system that adds the two previous numbers together in order to get the subsequent sum. After a win, you move two places down the sequence.
Flat Betting Systems
The flat betting system is exactly what you might think just from the name. The amount that you wager on each round stays flat and does not increase nor decrease. Although many would argue that this does not count as a baccarat betting strategy, whatever leads you to make your choices is a system in our opinion. There are some good and bad points about this approach.
The first thing is that a flat betting approach does not incur the risks of using a negative system like Martingale, as you will not increase the bets in order to chase losses. However, you will also not get a chance to win back those losses at all, excepting for a run of good luck. It is also impossible to increase profits with bigger wins as with a positive system. Realistically, playing baccarat with a flat betting strategy is a reasonable and cautious approach, but not one that will affect the house edge at all.
Card Counting in Baccarat
Card counting is a complex system most often used in blackjack. The player keeps a running score in their head, that increases and decreases according to the cards that are dealt. This helps them to identify the probability of high or low hands being dealt. This becomes more difficult the greater the number of decks being used is.
While card counting has been shown to work well in blackjack, allowing players to increase bets and scoop large wins, its effectiveness in baccarat is much less clear. While it is theoretically possible, it is certainly very challenging. Also, the help that can be gained by it is not absolutely certain. This is because of the complex third-card rules that govern the actions of PLAYER and BANKER hands in the game. As such, we don’t recommend that you try to count cards in baccarat.
Why You Shouldn’t Always Rely on Systems
As we said towards the top of this page, the most important thing to understand before you use any system is that there is no perfect baccarat strategy. They all come with their downsides, and none are guaranteed to make you money. The simple reason for this is that on even-odds bets, you will statistically win just less than 50% of bets. It really is true what they say, the house always wins.
The idea is simply to reduce the house edge as much as possible, so that you can get the most out of your betting experience. A system like Martingale will do this over the course of the majority of betting sessions. However, losing streaks are far more common than you might think, and you could end up losing a very large amount of money, outstripping your purse or hitting the table limit before recouping your losses.
Practice Your Chosen Baccarat Strategy
Getting some practice of any betting strategy for baccarat is a good idea, so that you are entirely comfortable with what to do at every turn before you start staking your hard-earnt cash on it. We developed a trial baccarat game so that you can put in that practise. Check it out below.
–Demo Game Instructions
Play our mini-baccarat game just like you would play an ordinary game of online baccarat:
- Click on a spot on the table to place a bet on that spot; tie, banker or player.
- Press the ‘Clear Bets’ button to remove all current bets from the table.
- Adjust the amount bet each click by selecting the appropriate chip size on the bottom left of the table, $1, $5 or $25.
- Press the ‘Deal Hand’ button after placing your bets to start a new deal.
- After a deal is completed, you can press the ‘Repeat Bet’ button to make the same wager as the previous round.
While it’s an incredibly simple game to play, if you’d like to learn more about it see our baccarat rules page for more information.
Strategy Traps You Should Avoid
Before you read this page, you may well have had some idea of how baccarat strategies might work. If this is the case, you probably also had – or still have – some misconceptions about them too. There are lots of baccarat strategy myths out there, so let’s take a minute to discuss and debunk them.
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1/4 Gambler’s Fallacy A common belief is that if one hand loses multiple hands in a row, then it becomes increasingly likely to win the next hand. Previous events have no influence on future outcomes, and losing streaks are very common in baccarat. -
2/4 Non-Commission Bets Are Better When you find out that, in most baccarat games, you will have to pay a commission out of your winnings on bets on the BANKER, you may well think that this makes it less worthwhile. However, the RTP is still higher than bets on the PLAYER.
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3/4 You Should Pick Non-Commission Games Being able to bet on the banker with no commission seems like a no-brainer. However, other rules are shifted to redress the balance, meaning that the RTP is often lower than normal, at 98.75% or so.
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4/4 Tie Bet Pays Out Better The TIE bet in baccarat usually pays out either 7:1 or 8:1, making it seem – on the face of it – like a far more generous option than that 1:1 odds on the hands. However, it is far less likely, and usually has a far, far greater house edge attached.
The thing to remember is that baccarat betting strategies are there to support your wins and to attempt to reduce the house edge or to maximise the profits you make off of winning hands. But there is no golden way to win at baccarat, so please don’t trust any site or person that tells you otherwise.
Our Top Game Recommendations
Of course, having a winning baccarat system is only the first thing you need to do if you want to use a strategy in order to help your gameplay. The other is to find the right game for you to play. Although it’s always subjective, we’ve picked out some games that we think are the best of the best. You can check out our reviews below.
You can also have a look at our guide to the internet’s best baccarat casinos if you want to find out more about other available online games. From there, you can also head over to see some baccarat tips, if you’re looking to increase your edge even more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Hopefully by this point, we have made it clear to you that there are no perfect systems, but hopefully, you have found what is, for you, a baccarat winning strategy. We’ve answered the questions that we are asked most often about this topic below.
How can I win with baccarat strategy?
There is no foolproof, sure-fire way to win with baccarat strategy, but using a tried and tested betting system can help you to reduce the house edge when playing.
What is the best strategy for baccarat?
This is subjective and depends on both your budget and your preferred approach to gambling. The best strategy for baccarat is one that you enjoy using and helps you to increase your takings while staying within your comfortable budget. Make sure that you are comfortable with how to play baccarat before adopting any strategies.
How do you win at baccarat using flat betting?
Using a flat betting baccarat strategy will not affect the number of hands that you win. It will, however, keep you from making rash decisions to chase losses or massive profits. This is how it differs from positive and negative progressive systems.
Should I bet on TIE in baccarat?
While choosing your betting option in baccarat is often mostly about whatever you enjoy doing most, the return to player rate on the TIE bet is almost always much lower than the other two main bets, so financially speaking, you should not bet on TIE in baccarat. This is one of the many things that it worthwhile about understanding baccarat strategy.
