The baccarat scoring rule, explained slowly

Posted 14 February 2007 at 20:18

Baccarat looks opaque from the rail because the drawing rule is a fixed table rather than a decision anyone makes. Nothing is chosen once the wagers are down. That is unusual enough among table games that observers assume there must be some hidden judgement in it, and there is not. The whole rule fits on a card.

Scoring first. Face cards and tens count zero, aces count one, and every other card counts its face value. A hand's total is the sum of its cards taken modulo ten, so a seven and a six total three rather than thirteen. Only the last digit survives, which is why totals never exceed nine and why the highest possible two card total is nine exactly.

Two hands are dealt two cards each. If either shows a total of eight or nine on those two cards, both hands stand and the higher total wins. This is the case that ends the deal immediately, and it accounts for a substantial share of all coups.

Otherwise the first hand draws on a total of zero through five and stands on six or seven. The second hand's rule then depends on whether the first hand drew, and if so on what value the drawn card showed. If the first hand stood, the second hand follows the same zero through five rule. If the first hand drew, the second hand's action is read from the drawn card in a small table: it draws on progressively narrower totals as the drawn card rises, standing on more totals when the drawn card is an eight.

Written out that way, the structure is a lookup, not a strategy. There is no point at which knowing the rule better changes what happens at the table, because no participant exercises any choice inside a coup. What the rule does determine is the frequency of each result, and therefore the payout tables that sit against them. The rule is worth learning for the same reason a scoring rule in any game is worth learning: it is what the numbers on the layout are describing.

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