baccarat

History

The origins of the game are disputed. Some sources claim that it dates to the 19th century, others that the game was introduced into France from Italy at the end of the 15th century by soldiers returning from the Italian Wars during the reign of King of France Charles VIII.

David Parlett considers Macao the immediate precursor to baccarat. Its name and rules suggest it may have been brought over by sailors returning from Asia where similar card games have been played since the early 17th century such as San zhang, Oicho-Kabu, and Gabo japgi. Macao appeared in Europe at the end of the 18th century and was popular for all classes. Its notoriety led to King Victor-Amadeus III banning it in all his realms in 1788. It was the most popular game in Watier's, an exclusive gentlemen's club in London, where it led to the ruin of Beau Brummell. It was declared illegal late in the 19th century, as a gambling game of almost pure chance; however it remained wildly popular in high society, aficionados including the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII), who was compelled to testify in court following the Royal baccarat scandal of 1890, in which a player was accused of cheating during games held at Tranby Croft in Yorkshire, England. The match in Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Night Games (Spiel im Morgengrauen) contains instructions for Macao under the name of baccarat. Its popularity in the United States waned after the early 20th century. The game still has a following in Continental Europe, especially in Russia. Like Macao and Victoria, baccarat was banned in Russia during the 19th century though the rules continued to be printed in game books.

Baccarat has been popular among the French nobility since the 19th century. Before the legalization of casino gambling in 1907, people in France commonly played baccarat in private gaming rooms. Dating to this time period, Baccarat Banque is the earliest form of baccarat; it is a three-person game and mentioned in Album des jeux by Charles Van-Tenac. Later, Chemin de Fer emerged as a two-player zero-sum game from Baccarat Banque. Chemin de Fer is a version which first appeared in the late 19th century. Its name, which is the French term for "railway", comes from the version being quicker than the original game, the railway being at that time the fastest means of transport. This version of baccarat remains the most popular in France.

Baccarat Punto Banco, in which the bettor bets on whether the Player or the Banker hand wins, was a significant change in the development of modern baccarat. It developed into a house-banked game in Havana in the 1940s, and is now the most popular modern form in most parts of the world.

Valuation of hands

In baccarat, the 2 through 9 cards (of any suit) are worth face value (in points); the 10, jack, queen, and king are worth zero; aces are worth one point; jokers are not used. The value of the hand is the units digit of the sum of the constituent cards, known as modulo ten arithmetic. For example, a hand consisting of 2 and 3 is worth five, while a hand consisting of 6 and 7 is worth three, that being the value of the units digit in the combined point total of thirteen. The highest possible hand value in baccarat is therefore nine.

Versions

Punto banco

Punto banco is nowadays the most played version of baccarat in the United States. In punto banco, the casino banks the game at all times, and commits to playing out both hands according to fixed drawing rules, known as the "tableau" (French: "board"), in contrast to more historic baccarat games where each hand is associated with an individual who makes drawing choices. The player (punto) and banker (banco) are simply designations for the two hands dealt out in each coup, two outcomes which the bettor can back; the player hand has no particular association with the gambler, nor the banker hand with the house.

Punto banco is dealt from a shoe containing 6 or 8 decks of cards shuffled together; a cut card is placed in front of the seventh from last card, and the drawing of the cut-card indicates the last coup of the shoe. The dealer burns the first card face up and then based on its respective numerical value, with aces worth 1 and face cards worth 10, the dealer burns that many cards face down. For each coup, two cards are dealt face up to each hand, starting from "player" and alternating between the hands. The croupier may call the total (e.g., "five player, three banker"). If either the player or banker or both achieve a total of 8 or 9 at this stage, the coup is finished and the result is announced: a player win, a banker win, or tie. If neither hand has eight or nine, the drawing rules are applied to determine whether the player should receive a third card. Then, based on the value of any card drawn to the player, the drawing rules are applied to determine whether the banker should receive a third card. The coup is then finished, the outcome is announced, and winning bets are paid out.

Punto banco is a pure game of chance and therefore it is not possible for a gambler's bets to be rationally motivated.

If neither the player nor the banker is dealt a total of 8 or 9 in the first two cards (known as a "natural"), the tableau is consulted, first for the player's rules, then the banker's.

Player's rule

If the player has an initial total of 5 or less, they draw a third card. If the player has an initial total of 6 or 7, they stand.

Banker's rule

Baccarat banque

There are two variants of baccarat banque: banque limitée ("casino") and banque ouverte ("no-limit") also known as à tout va ("anything-goes"). The social form of the game is banque ouverte; anyone may take the position of banker at no-limit banque, but there are no minimum or maximum table limits, and thus the position of banker has substantial financial exposure (equal to the sum of all action on the table). In banque limitée, table limits are obligatory, and the position of banker is always filled by an employee of the casino. Formally speaking, banque is a three-player game in which two of the players are teams represented by rotating captains; the third player is the banker, who plays for himself only. Betting interests are largely independent from the course of play itself (for example, it is common to play Left against banker, hoping to win, while betting on Right against banker—obviously, in this situation, Left has no influence on Right's choices in play, no matter how high his stake).

(Nothing prevents no-limit banque from being played in casinos—but more stringent procedural safeguards apply compared to casino banque, such as play being limited to one designated table, with two sessions of two so-called tailles, an obligatory recess between the second and third session, and monopolisation of the bank being expressly prohibited. For these reasons, the game more firmly associated with casinos is banque limitée.)

In no-limit banque, a member of the public acts as banker either for a taille (which generally lasts approximately two hours) or for a session of two tailles. A stop card is inserted at least ten cards before the end of the shoe; when this card is reached (or when the banker retires, at their discretion), that constitutes a taille. Each individual deal is called a coup. Monégasque tradition (mentioned in the laws of Monaco) is to use cards without corner indices.

The role of banker is generally assumed by putting one's name on a written list of the form:

If more than one person wishes to bank in a particular time slot, it must be settled by drawing of lots. The shoe contains six inter-shuffled decks for no-limit and three inter-shuffled decks for casino banque. Shuffling is done by the croupier 'washing' the cards on the table, and new cards must be used each session; this is all the more important if playing with paper cards (as in casino play).

Chemin de fer

Six decks of cards are used, shuffled together. Players are seated in random order, typically around an oval table; discarded cards go to the center. Play begins to the right of the croupier and continues counterclockwise.

Once play begins, one player is designated as the banker; this player also deals. The other players are "punters". The position of banker passes counterclockwise in the course of the game. In each round, the banker wagers the amount they are willing to risk. Each other player, in order, then declares whether they will "go bank", playing against the entire current bank with a matching wager. A maximum of one player may "go bank". If no one "goes bank", players make their wagers in order. If the total wagers from the players are less than the bank, observing bystanders may also wager up to the amount of the bank. If the total wagers from the players are greater than the bank, the banker may choose to increase the bank to match; otherwise, the excess wagers are removed in reverse play order.

The banker deals four cards face-down: two to themselves and two held in common by the remaining players. The player with the highest individual wager (or first in play order if tied for highest wager) is selected to represent the group of non-banker players. The banker and player both look at their cards; if either has an eight or a nine, this is immediately announced and the hands are turned face-up and compared. If neither hand is an eight or nine, the player has a choice to accept or refuse a third card; if accepted, it is dealt face-up. Traditional practice – grounded in mathematics, similar to basic strategy in blackjack, but further enforced via social sanctions by the other individuals whose money is at stake – dictates that one always accept a card if one's hand totals between 0 and 4, inclusive, and always refuse a card if it totals 6 or 7. After the player finishes, the banker, in turn, decides either to accept or to refuse another card. Once both the banker and the representative player have made their decision, the hands are turned face-up and compared.

If the player's hand exceeds the banker's hand when they are compared, each wagering player receives back their wager and a matching amount from the bank, and the position of banker passes to the next player in order. If the banker's hand exceeds the player's hand, all wagers are forfeit and placed into the bank, and the banker position does not change. If there is a tie, wagers remain as they are for the next hand.

Macao

Macao uses two decks of cards shuffled together. Punters place their bets (within the agreed limits) against the banker. Initially, one card is dealt clockwise and face down to every player by the banker. The punters' objective is to beat the banker's card value or risk losing their bet. In case of a tie, whoever has the same value with fewer cards wins. The banker wins if there is a tie in both value and number of cards (in an early version, all bets are off). Any punter who receives a natural 9 receives triple the amount of the bet as long as the banker does not have a natural 9 too. Winning with a natural 8 awards double while winning with a 7 or under is only equal to the bet. Players can request additional cards which are dealt face up; if it is a ten or a face card, they can reject it and ask for another. In an early version of this game, going over 9 with extra cards amounts to a "bust" as in blackjack, later versions use modulo 10 arithmetic as in the other games. Beating the banker with a pair only awards an equal amount to the bet. When the deck is exhausted, the player to the banker's left becomes the new banker.

Victoria is a variation of Macao where players are initially dealt two cards.

Economy

American casinos are generating an increasing amount of their revenue from baccarat play. For example, in May 2012, Nevada only generated 18.3% of its total table gaming win from baccarat. However, in May 2013, this percentage increased to 33.1% and in May 2014 it rose to 45.2%.

Baccarat is the most important table game in Macau, with taxes from baccarat play constituting the largest single source of public funding in Macau. About 91% of total income from Macau casinos in 2014 came from the punto banco variation.

In popular culture

Royal baccarat scandal

The Tranby Croft affair in 1891 and William Gordon Cumming's subsequent lawsuit were known together as the royal baccarat scandal, due to the involvement of the future King Edward VII. Since the Prince of Wales was involved in the incident, it inspired a huge amount of media interest in the game, bringing baccarat to the attention of the public at large. Accounts of the scandal in newspapers also included the rules for the game. The scandal became the subject of music hall songs and a stage play.

James Bond

Baccarat chemin-de-fer is the favoured game of James Bond, the fictional secret agent created by Ian Fleming. Bond plays the game in numerous novels, most notably his 1953 debut, Casino Royale, in which much of the plot revolves around a game between Bond and SMERSH operative Le Chiffre; the unabridged version of the novel includes a primer to the game for readers who are unfamiliar with it. It is also featured in several filmed versions of the character, including the 1954 television adaptation of Casino Royale, where Bond bankrupts Le Chiffre in order to have him eliminated by his Soviet superiors; Dr. No, where Bond is first introduced while playing the game in film; Thunderball; the 1967 version of Casino Royale, which is the most detailed treatment of a baccarat game in any Bond film; On Her Majesty's Secret Service; For Your Eyes Only; and GoldenEye.

In the 2006 movie adaptation of Casino Royale, baccarat is replaced by Texas hold 'em poker, largely due to the poker boom at the time of filming.

Phil Ivey controversy

The advantage play technique of edge sorting gained attention in 2012, when a casino in the United Kingdom refused to pay professional gambler Phil Ivey about $11 million, after they determined that he had used the technique to gain an advantage over the house. The same year, Ivey and a female companion won $9.6 million at the Borgata casino in Atlantic City using edge sorting and another $500,000 playing craps using his gains as a stake in the game. The Borgata paid him after his win but then sued Ivey in 2014 after surveillance video showed he had manipulated the dealer into rotating certain cards in the deck to exploit the flaw on the back of the cards. The Borgata prevailed and won $10.1 million, which Ivey refused to pay. In February 2019, the Borgata received approval from the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey to go after Ivey's assets in the state of Nevada, since he had no assets in the state of New Jersey to pursue. Ivey and the Borgata reached a settlement in July 2020.