Baccarat systems – do they work?

The post title’s not a rhetorical question.  I really don’t know if baccarat systems work.

But I am a doubter when it comes to the topic of gambling systems (particularly when they are for sale) and as a general rule view them and those selling them with a very healthy dose of skepticism.  However I am also the first to admit that I don’t exactly know the game of baccarat inside out.

But there is a strong rationale behind my skepticism (which I’ll get to below).  First lets touch on a few of the systems.

As easy to beat as roulette

Search Google for ‘roulette system’, and you’ll find around 5 million web pages prescribing some kind of system to beat roulette.  Apparently it’s  an easy game to beat, what with millions of different methods of winning.  Funnily enough, casinos still call it a ‘house game’ – one of their high returning games and they don’t seem to be too worried about any of these systems eating into their house edge (at least since modern wheels with negligible wheel bias were universally adopted).

Search Google for ‘baccarat system’ and you’ll find a few hundred thousand pages detailing various baccarat systems.  Browse any baccarat forum and you’ll find a heap of systems claimed to be effective, discussed, analyzed, lauded or dismissed.

The systems come with many names; the Pendulum, Hollandish, Flat, Ellis, TB4L, Tiers et Tout, Star, Hurricane, Wong Phat Predictor, BigJoes, the Clifton Davis – the list goes on and on.  My personal favorite is the ‘Infallible Baccarat System’ …it really does exist and anyone who is naive enough to believe that it is truly infallible deserves to lose their money.

There is also Martingale system for baccarat that I assume prescribes doubling up on losing bets, like its roulette counterpart.  The million dollar question of course  is do any of them actually work?  I neither studied in detail nor empirically tested any of these systems (which I hazard a guess could become an expensive exercise) but would be very surprised if any of them do, for reasons set out below.

Evidence of effective systems

A very real barometer of the effectiveness of any casino gambling system is casinos’ willingness to let those systems be used on their tables.  For decades, blackjack advantage players who knew how to count cards had casinos around the world trying to identify and ban them from entry – and they went to great lengths to do this, including using sophisticated player identity security, legal action and eventually rule changes and countermeasures to limit losses.  Guys like Ken Uston, James Grosjean, Arnold Snyder, and John Ferguson won a lot of money and scared the casinos. This is documented fact.

Now just as I have never heard of casinos worrying about advantage roulette players (in the post-low-profile-wheel era), I have never heard of any baccarat players, or any baccarat system that has lead to casinos either:

– banning players; or

– frowning on the use of a particular system; or

– having to change game rules or shuffling policy; or

– introduce counter-measures of any kind to limit losses.

If anyone out there has any documented examples of any of these then I will stand corrected and start to believe in baccarat systems – your comments in this regard are welcomed.  Until then, I will simply view Baccarat as a casino game with a very small house edge that offers the opportunity for short-term wins but not a sustained player edge.

And the above rationale holds true at live casinos also.  While deliberate shuffle policies are employed in live blackjack to prevent count penetration, no such measures are employed for live baccarat.

cheers

LD