Before Punto Banco, before Chemin de Fer, baccarat was played à deux tableaux: the bank sat in the middle of a long table and dealt two hands, one for each half of the room, and played against both at once. That is Baccarat Banque, the game of the grand 19th-century French casinos. Here the bank is the house and you choose which hand to back.
How to play
Bets. Chips come in 10, 50 and 250. There are three spots, each up to 1,000 credits in steps of 10:
- Left or Right: that hand against Banker. A win pays 1 to 1, a tie returns your bet.
- À cheval (“on horseback”, straddling both): you win 1 to 1 only if both hands beat Banker and lose only if both lose. Anything else, one win and one loss or any tie, returns your bet.
Card values. As in all baccarat: aces 1, cards 2 to 9 their pips, tens and picture cards 0, and only the last digit of a total counts (7 + 8 = 5).
The deal. From a three-deck shoe, two cards each to Left, Right and Banker. Banker’s cards stay face down.
Naturals. If Banker has 8 or 9, it turns over at once and nobody draws. A hand with 8 or 9 stands.
The two hands play in turn, Left first. With 0 to 4 a hand draws one card, with 6 or 7 it stands. With 5 the choice is yours if you have money on that hand: draw or stand. A hand you have not backed stands on 5. Third cards are dealt face up.
Banker plays last. Banker looks at its own two cards and at what each hand did: stood, or drew a card it can see. It does not see their first two cards. It then draws or stands, whichever is worth more to the bank against the bets on the table. Each hand is compared with Banker separately: the higher total wins.
How the Banker decides
In the old casinos the banker was free to draw or stand, and a good one read the table. Ours does the same thing with exact arithmetic. It works out how likely each total is for both hands, given what it saw, and assumes a backed hand on 5 draws half the time. It then picks whichever choice leaves you the smaller expected win.
Two things follow:
- Banker plays against your money. If you only back Left, Banker draws or stands to beat Left and ignores Right. If you back both hands evenly, it has to play against both at once, and some situations have no good answer for it.
- Your third card tells Banker something. A hand that draws a 9 probably had a low total and now has a middling one; a hand that stood has 5, 6 or 7.
What it costs
Counted exactly with the Banker’s rule (on an infinite shoe; the three-deck shoe at the table is within a few tenths of a percent):
| Your bet | House edge |
|---|---|
| Left or Right alone, draw on 5 | 3.59% |
| Left or Right alone, stand on 5 | 3.87% |
| Left and Right, equal bets, draw on 5 | 2.71% |
| À cheval, stand on 5 | 1.33% |
| À cheval, draw on 5 | 1.37% |
Strategy
Back both hands, or ride À cheval. A Banker facing money on both sides cannot play to beat both, and its edge drops. À cheval is the cheapest bet in the game, but most rounds push.
On 5, draw when you back one hand or both. Standing tells Banker you have 5, 6 or 7, and that helps it more than the extra card helps you. With À cheval alone the difference is tiny; standing is very slightly better.
One hand alone is the most expensive bet. Banker gets to play against just that hand, and that is where its information is worth most.
If you enjoy Baccarat Banque, try Baccarat Squeeze or Badugi next.
