Earlier this year, The New York Times published the obituary of John Fairfax of Henderson, a lifelong adventurer and gambling enthusiast who favored baccarat. 카지노사이트

“Baccarat is equal parts skill and chance,” the Times obit stated. But it was wrong. Baccarat is 100 percent luck, zero percent skill. By all accounts, John Fairfax lived a rewarding and fascinating life, but he was not playing baccarat with a mathematical advantage against the house. No one does.

Even so, the casinos’ edge in the game is small enough-and many of the wagers large enough-that baccarat revenues can fluctuate violently compared with other games, often plummeting one month and soaring the next.For a card game that generates a sizeable chunk of Nevada’s table-gaming revenue, baccarat is a rather elementary pastime (see the rules below). It offers no opportunity to use logic or creative thinking, as poker does. It offers none of the intellectual stimulation of noncasino card games like bridge or hearts. It offers no chance to win a veritable fortune on a single modest bet, as you might with horse racing’s Pick Six.

The only decision in baccarat is choosing to bet whether the “player” or the “banker” will end up with a better hand. And even those terms have no real meaning. They might as well be called “red” and “blue” or “heads” and “tails.”That’s it. The hand plays out according to a predetermined set of rules, and you can expect to lose a little more than $1 for every $100 you put into action (assuming you avoid the “tie,” which caters to masochists with its huge house advantage).

Belying the game’s simplistic nature, however, baccarat results play a major role in shaping the bottom line of Nevada’s big casino companies. In 2011, for example, the state’s casinos won $1.26 billion from baccarat players, while only netting $1.04 billion from blackjack players and less than $400 million from both craps and roulette players. Consider that baccarat is available at about 259 tables in 25 casinos, compared with blackjack’s 2,801 tables in 151 casinos, and its revenue numbers are even more noteworthy. No other table game even comes close.