Live Dealer Baccarat

Nothing about the cards changes when a person deals them: the counting, the naturals and the drawing table match the digital game, and so does every probability built on them. With eight decks Banker still wins 45.86% of rounds and costs 1.06% with a 5% commission, Player costs 1.24%, and a Tie at 8 to 1 costs 14.36%.

What can differ from one live table to the next is what differs between any two baccarat games: the commission rule, what the Tie pays, the number of decks and the side bets on offer. Each table lists them in its rules. Prices for one, six and eight decks sit on the baccarat odds page, while the how-to-play guide walks through the drawing table.

A live table deals from a shoe of several decks that is shuffled, cut and then played down over many rounds. A cut card is placed near the back; when it comes out, the table finishes the shoe and shuffles a new one. That is why a live table can show a scoreboard for the current shoe, and why the scoreboard starts again empty when a new shoe begins.

Because the cards come from one shoe, each round slightly changes what is left for the next. The change is measurable but tiny, and the strategy guide sizes it card by card and explains why it gives no reason to change bets.

Squeeze tables reveal some cards slowly, bent up from one corner or turned a little at a time, before the value is shown. It is a ritual associated with high-stakes play, and it adds suspense and time; the card underneath was fixed the moment it was dealt.

Speed tables do the opposite: a shorter betting window and a quicker deal, so more rounds are played each hour. The odds per round stay put; what rises is the number of rounds you can bet in an hour, and with it what an hour at the table costs.

VIP and similar tables differ in their limits and presentation. None of these names changes a rule of the game.

Some live baccarat games add random multipliers, drawn before or during a round, that raise the payout when a winning hand includes certain cards. The multipliers are paid for elsewhere in the game, usually through a fee on each bet or reduced base payouts, and the game's rules screen sets out which.

How often each multiplier appears is not published, so these bets cannot be priced from the cards the way the standard bets are. The one usable figure is the return percentage the game prints in its rules. Compare it with the standard game's Banker bet, which gives up 1.06% of each stake, before choosing a multiplier table for its bigger wins.

Bac Bo takes baccarat's three bets, Player, Banker and Tie, and settles them with dice instead of cards: each side rolls two dice and the higher total wins. There is no drawing rule and no third card, so nothing on the how-to-play page applies to it, and what a tie does to a Player or Banker bet varies by game. Read its rules screen before assuming it plays like baccarat.

Live tables accept real-money bets only, and none of them offers a demo, so there is nothing free to list here. Their rules are the digital games' rules, though, which makes the free baccarat games a sound rehearsal: practise the drawing table and learn where a table prints its payouts before a live table asks for money.