Baccarat tips

Punto Banco Baccarat is an extremely popular game both in online casino and bricks and mortar establishments due to its basic rules and low house edge. A quick search of the internet for baccarat tips, with one of the leading search engines yields hundreds, if not thousands, of results but almost all of them are simply looking to take your money for some promised betting system. The tips shown in this article come from years of gambling and playing baccarat and do not promise you untold riches, in fact quite the opposite.

The first tip, and this applies to all gambling, is to only use money that you can afford to lose. Casinos are not in business to make you money they are there to take your money and take it they will! Playing with money you cannot afford to lose may seem exciting when you win but it can be disastrous when you lose and it can have dire consequences for you and those around you.

The next thing to realise is that no betting system works for baccarat, not one. This is because there are no player interventions so you are simply at the mercy of Lady Luck. Winning or losing has nothing to do with skill so you cannot form a betting system to beat this. If you do feel like following a system then the one you will be told about most often is “Avant Dernier” which means “before last.” In simple terms, if the last sequence of wins were for the player, banker and then the player again, then the next hand you should bet on banker.

Many gamblers like to use the Martingale betting system for baccarat but I urge you not to as you will go broke eventually. Read this article for reasons on why the Martingale system is extremely flawed. Another popular system is called progressive betting and sees the player increase their stake by 50% each time the win but revert back to their initial stake when they lose. So a player starting with a $10 bet wins so their next bet would be $15. They win again so the next bet is $22.50 but they lose this one so start betting $10 again.

The most attractive betting option is to bet on the player, which has a house edge of 1.24% when playing from eight decks of cards. The banker option has a house edge of just over 1% but it also carries a 5% charge on winnings. Betting on a tie, which offers nine-to-one odds, should rarely be done as the house has a huge advantage over you compared to the other two options.

Video Poker

Video Poker is one of the most popular games played in both live and online casinos around the world. Offering a low house advantage, and in some cases handing the player the advantage, along with allowing players to avoid the often intimidating table games, it is easy to see why it has such a loyal fan base.

The company SIRCOMA, which stood for Si Redd’s Coin Machines, later becoming International Game Technology, introduced a machine called Draw Poker back in the 1970s and after a few changes to the rules and payouts a number of other machines started to appear offering what is now known as video poker.

The game is based on Five-Card Draw and as such plays extremely similar to it, though with a few differences to help the house have an advantage. The player starts the game by entering between one and five credits, with the payouts being better for playing with more credits, and they are dealt five cards. They can then discard between one and five of them in an attempt to make a poker hand. Usually the player requires at least a pair of jacks to qualify with better hands being two pair, three of a kind, a straight, a flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush and the very best hand, a Royal Flush, that is a straight ten to ace all of the same suit.

Jacks or better is the most common machine and as the name suggests the player needs to have a pair of jacks or better for his or her hand to qualify. These machines are often known as a 9/6 Jacks, as they pay out nine times the credits for hitting a full house and six for a flush. The maximum possible payout on these video poker machines, if the player plays perfect strategy ranges from 98.4% for inserting one credit all the way to 99.5% for playing with the maximum stake. The difference is because of the better payouts on the more rare holdings such as the Royal Flush, which will only be hit on average after several thousand plays.

Another popular version of video poker, one that is common online, is Deuces Wild and allows the player to count a two as any card they wish. With this system a player should expect to get four of a kind every 500 or so plays and the theoretical return with perfect play ranges from 99.7% up to 100.8% if playing for the maximum stake!

Scoring in Pai Gow

Pai Gow is Chinese gambling game played with Chinese dominoes, with a scoring system similar to that of baccarat. Though not as popular as blackjack or roulette, the game is extremely popular in casinos that have a large Chinese player base or those that are based online.

The game starts when the dealer shuffles the 32 dominoes and puts them into eight piles of four, which is known as “the woodpile.” After some more shuffling, the dealer gives each of the players, usually seven of them, four dominoes that they have to use to make two hands of two dominoes. If both of the player’s hands score higher than the dealer’s then they win, if one wins and the other loses the match-up is a tie and all other scenarios mean the dealer wins.

The name Pai Gow loosely translates to “make nine” and as the name suggests the best score a player can make is nine, though there are a couple of exceptions to this as you will find out later in the article. Working out your score is very simple and only requires minimal maths skills. All a player needs to do is add up the pips on the dominoes and then take away the place of ten from the score.

For example, a domino or tile as they are often called, described as a 1-3 would have four spots in total. If the player paired this domino with another say a 2-3, five spots, the total score for this hand would be nine. On the other hand, a player pairing a 2-3 with a 4-5 would only score four points and not 14 as you have to remove ten from any score over ten. This would mean a player pairing up a 5-5 and a 4-6 would score zero points.

As mentioned there are a couple of circumstances where the player, or dealer, can score more than nine points. Dominoes displaying double-one or a double-six are known as Day and Teen respectively. Combining a Day or Teen with an eight allows the player to score 10 instead of zero and is called a Gong, whilst combining them with a nine means the player scores 11, known as a Wong.

Tiles showing 1-2 and 2-4 are also known as Gee Joon tiles and can be used as wildcards and score either three or six, making them powerful tiles to have. A 1-2 with a 5-6 would score seven and not four. Pairs are also very sought after tiles, though not all pairs are equal. Identical pairs, such as 4-4 are worth more and always beat the tiles that have the same score but look different, such as 5-3 or 6-2.

Pai Gow

One of the oldest and most widely played casino games in the world is Pai Gow, a Chinese gambling game that is played with Chinese dominoes and dates back to the Song Dynasty, meaning it was played as far back as 960AD! The game is steeped in tradition and is the basis of games such as baccarat as its name loosely translates to “make nine.”

To start a new game the dominoes, or tiles as they are often referred to, are spread on the table and randomised and shuffled. They are then placed into eight stacks of four tiles, known as the “woodpile.” The dealer then performs a number of ritualistic shuffles of the woodpile so that new wood piles are created, before bets are placed.

The game is usually played with seven players and the dealer, with each of them given four tiles with which they have to make two hands, each containing two tiles. The hand they make that has the lower value is known as the front hand, whilst the higher valued one is called the rear hand. If the player’s front hand beats the dealer’s front hand and the player’s rear hand is better than the dealer’s then the player wins. However, if only one of the hands is better than the dealer’s then it is a tie. All other variations mean the player loses.

Scoring is very similar to games like baccarat in that both the dealer and the player have to drop the tens place from their score. For example, if they make a hand with a tile that has a total of four pips on it and one that has a total of five pips on it then the player would score nine points. But, if they had a tile with five pips and another that had 11, then the player would only score six points and not 16 as the ten place has to be removed. Likewise, making a hand from two tiles that both have a total of ten points each would return a score of zero.

Whilst the game is massively popular in China, it is not as widely spread in Western countries although it can often be found in areas where the casino is in close proximity to Chinese settlements or so called Chinatown’s.

Betting on roulette

Roulette is one of the most exciting and enjoyable casino games around, loved by complete amateurs and seasoned gamblers alike for its very basic rules and potentially huge payouts. Whilst you can literally bet on whatever you feel like when playing roulette, by reading the following few paragraphs you will know the slang and the most popular bets to make when you play online roulette.

There are two basic type of roulette bets called inside and outside bets, their names given due to the position on the table where the player places their bets. They are exactly how they sound, inside bets are made on the inside of the table, whilst outside bets are placed on the outer edge of the table.

The most popular inside bets include betting on a single number, which pays out at a massive 35/1 and the split bet, also kown as a Double or a Two Number Bet. This particular bet sees the player bet on two adjoining numbers by placing a chip on the dividing line and they will collect 17/1 on their stake if their number comes in.

Keeping with inside bets, many players opt to make a Street Bet, also known as Three on a row or a Three Number Bet. Again, this type of bet is exactly how it sounds and sees the player bet on an entire “street” of numbers, for example seven, eight and nine. A winning spin here is worth 11/1 on the player’s stake. A Square Bet is when a player places a chip in the middle of four number, such as 10, 11, 13 and 14 in a cross shape, which nets the player 8/1 odds on their bet.

Players wishing to take a less risky option in their betting are advised to make outside bets. These bets payout lower odds but are almost always for larger sums. For example, it is not uncommon to find a roulette table with inside bets set to a minimum of £0.50 but the outside bets set to £5. Outside bets consists of the Dozen Bet, which sees the player betting on the ball landing on 1-12, 13-24 or 25-36, the Column Bet and the Martingale system’s dream bet, the so-called Even Money Bet where the player bets on red and black or odd and even numbers. The Dozen Bet and Column Bet pay out at 2/1 whilst the Even Money Bet pays evens, as the name implies.

Betting systems

The internet is quite literally crammed full of unscrupulous people attempting to sell you inside secrets on how to beat the casino out of hundreds of thousands of pounds through the use of their secret systems. Here is a free word of advice, do not even consider buying them, they do not work!

Think about this logically for a moment, if you had discovered a system that would allow you to use your favourite casino game as a cash register, would you keep it to yourself and a few select friends or sell it on the internet for £20 at a time and risk the casinos being able to close any loophole?

The main reason every single betting system fails eventually is that the house has a mathematical advantage over the player. Regardless of how small the edge is, it just being there means that in the long run it is impossible for the player to beat the casino, though in the short term luck is a major factor and one of the reasons gambling at the casino is so popular.

A common betting system people employ is the Martingale system, which originated in France in the 18th Century. The system was designed to try and beat a simple game that involved tossing a coin and if it landed on heads the player won his stake but if it landed on tails he lost. By doubling their stake each time they lost, the player was guaranteed to wipe out all of their losses, and even win the stake amount, when the coin finally landed on heads. It is quite easy to see why the system gained in popularity extremely quickly, but even in this 50/50 scenario the system is flawed as it assumes the player has infinite wealth and that there are no limits on the betting amounts, which of course there always will be.

Martingale betting is popular when playing roulette, especially when the players are betting on red or black, the closest to 50/50 they can get to, though it is actually 52.6316% in favour of the house! Betting at £5 per spin and doubling the bet each time you lost would mean you could potentially lose £320 if you lost six spins in a row, which would be very close to the table limits if not actually exceeding them. But I hear you saying that losing six spins in a row is highly unlikely and whilst you are correct to some degree, losing six consecutive spins is actually quite common if you play enough.

The chance of losing a single spin is the 52.6316% already mentioned so losing six consecutive spins is 2.1256%. Spin the roulette wheel 73 times and you will have a 50.3% chance of losing six consecutive spins, a massive difference. Increase the number of spins to 150 and your chances increase to 77.2% whilst a session of 250 spins will see you have six consecutive losing spins a staggering 91.1% of the time!

Betting systems simply do not work, all they do is create an illusion that they do but in fact most of them actually increase your exposure to variance. Do not get all wrapped up in trying to beat the casino, enjoy your gambling and if you win great, if not you can always try again tomorrow, as long as you have not gone broke from following some weird and wonderful betting system!

Gambling superstitions

Gamblers are a superstitious group of people, often going to great lengths to avoid certain things or to ensure that they follow the same routines as they believe doing so will help them win. It may be as simple as carrying an item they consider to be lucky or as diverse as having to eat the same meal or sit in a specific manner otherwise they believe they will have no luck!

Most of this is down to psychology or attribution bias, in that a player who has had several winning sessions may have been been wearing his favourite blue shirt and begins to believe that this particular shirt has some mystical powers that allow him to be more lucky when wearing it.

Some superstitions are not due to a player’s observations, instead they are passed on through folklore over many years and people decide to continue the myth. Examples of these include the fact you should never cross your legs when gambling, especially at poker, as you prevent luck from being able to enter you! A popular American superstition is that $50 notes are unlucky with some Las Vegas casinos not offering them when they pay out winnings and many gamblers refusing them entirely.

Another Las Vegas based superstition is it is unlucky to enter through the front entrance an this was amplified when the MGM Grand used to be in the theme of the famous MGM Studios and customers had to enter the casino through the lion’s mouth! The thought of “entering the beast” coupled with it being the front entrance put off hundreds of thousands of players from playing there!

One group of gamblers that are extremely superstitious are the Chinese. They believe the colour red to be very lucky but also certain number too. The number eight relates to prosperity so is hugely popular, whilst three, six and nine are also considered good gambling number, especially when combined with the number eight. Chinese gamblers avoid the number four like the plague as it sounds similar the word “death” in Cantonese, whilst many Chinese people will not stay in room 58 of a hotel as it sounds similar to “won’t prosper.”

Believe in them or not, superstitions are part and parcel of gambling and you should respect those who do believe in them. Do you have any superstitions of your own?

Casino etiquette

All casinos have their own set of rules that have to be obeyed, whether they are based in a real life venue or virtually online. The rules are usually there for all to see but there are also some unwritten rules, etiquette if you like, that all gamblers should adhere to.

The most important thing to realise is that you should expect to lose and you should handle losses with a touch of class. Casinos are not there to give customers money, they are there to make money from the customer and they do this by stacking the odds in their favour. For example, on a standard roulette board you will be offered 35-to-1 odds when you bet on a single number yet the odds against this happening are 37-to-1.

Never cheat or attempt to cheat in any way, shape or form. Thanks to the state of the art security of online casinos it is practically impossible to cheat but some unscrupulous types may try to do so at their local casino. Cheating not only undermines the integrity of the game but it also makes the game far less enjoyable for all those involved.

Understand that betting systems simply do not work so do not waste your money purchasing so-called trade secrets or waste your time and energy trying to apply them to the games at the casino. All the games you can play in a casino are based on mathematics and you simply cannot beat rules set by maths. Think of it this way, if you had devised a system that could be used to win hundreds of thousands from a casino would you keep it to yourself and live the life of luxury or would you sell it to anyone who wanted it for a £10-£20 and risk the casinos being able to prevent the system from working? Exactly!

Finally, be aware of the etiquette of specific games and also of the different cultures of people you gamble with. For example, if you play craps then it is often frowned upon to bet on and therefore call for a seven, or any other number that would see most people lose, so do not do it! Also, it is also considered bad luck to ask to change the dice, again in craps, so once again refrain from doing so. Above all, be respectful of those around you, help uphold the integrity of the games and enjoy yourself.

Blackjack tips

There are literally hundreds of articles available, mostly online, where the author promises that if the reader follows their instructions to the letter then they will beat the casino when playing blackjack. All of these articles are complete nonsense as it is impossible, without card counting, to beat the casino. However, taking on board some of the following tips should help you to lower the house’s edge and possibly win you more money than you would otherwise.

The first tip should be quite obvious but it is you should always pay attention to what the dealer’s up-card is. Being able to see the one of the dealer’s cards you can make an educated guess to his possible hands. This is especially true when you know your own cards and those of the players you are playing with. The dealer’s up-card generally dictates the action from the other players as some hands are literally unplayable, whilst other are a mandatory double-down.

Many players who are dealt a pair split them regardless but doing this gives a big advantage to the house. Never split a pair of tens as the only hand that beats you is Blackjack or if the dealer draws to an unlikely 21. Fives should never be split either, instead you should be looking to double-down, that is of course unless the dealer is showing an ace and possibly has Blackjack. Pairs of aces and eights should always be split, aces especially if you can double-down on the next card although this rule is now quite rare.

If your hand totals 17 or more then you should stand regardless of the dealer’s up-card. The reasoning behind this is simple, the risk of busting is far too great to even consider asking for another card. Although standing with 17 when the dealer is showing a seven, eight, nine or ten will result you in losing quite a few hands, you simply have to accept that this is part of the game, plus the dealer will often have hands that require them to draw so all is not lost.

Finally, be very weary of stiff hands, that is hands from 12-16 that run a huge risk of busting if you decide to draw another card. If the dealer’s up-card is lower than a seven then simply stand and let them do the drawing but if it is seven or above then you simply have no choice but to hit and hope for the best!

Dealing with losing

Nobody plans to lose when they play their favourite casino game, be it Blackjack or Roulette, from the comfort of your own home in an online casino or at your local bricks and mortar casino but how you deal with losing can really shape you as a gambler and even as a person.

When you first start playing casino games for real money it can take some time before you become accustomed to losing and losing on a regular basis. You need realise that losing is part and parcel of every game you will play, in fact losing can even make the feeling of winning be much stronger and more pleasant!

One of the best pieces of advice I received when I first starting playing casino games was to learn the odds and probabilities for every possible outcome for the game you are playing. This way you are not only aware of the house’s edge over you but you can prepare yourself for the inevitable loss. For example, if you are wanting to bet on a single number at the roulette table then your odds against winning are 37-to one, which means for every 38 bets you place on that number it will win once, over a large sample size. It should be obvious that betting on a single number can and does lead to long spells of placing bets with no return.

Losing is easier to cope with if you have an adequate gambling bankroll to fund your game. By having money set aside that is purely for gambling, you will remove a lot of pressure from your psyche that you have to win and will enjoy the game more and the losses will be less significant to you. Imagine you have £200 spare and decide that this will only be used to gamble with. If you lose it you will probably still be disappointed but as it was spare it does not matter. Now imagine you have taken £200 from your wages that you had ear-marked for paying part of your rent with. If you lose this money now it is disastrous and the loss will feel much heavier and painful.

Finally, you should always set yourself a stop loss, that is an amount of money you are prepared to lose and once you reach this figure you simply walk away and stop playing completely. Stop losses are a great way if limiting your potential losses and also prevent you from losing so much money that you start to play erratically or begin attempting to chase your losses.