So the game that started in Europe and received a new life in Asia has become more accessible than ever to American gamblers. While table minimums remain pricey in high limit areas, the game can also be found on the regular casino floor, often with lower minimums. Zender says that since most of the big Asian players don’t care much for the James Bond pageantry of tuxedoed dealers and double tables, so most casinos now offer the game on a single table, which looks a great deal like a blackjack game.

That’s within two standard deviations, so it can happen.”īaccarat has changed a great deal from its elegant European origins. So if a guy is betting $10,000 a hand, he could conceivably win $1 million from you. “The rule of thumb I tell them,” Zender says of his advice to casino managers looking to reap the profits of baccarat, “is that your risk is 100 times your average bet. While casinos can potentially make millions in a few hours, they can also lose millions. How high do the betting limits go? Zender cites casinos in Singapore, which take bets as high as $750,000 SGD (about $550,000 USD) on a single hand, and shares that casinos on the Las Vegas Strip might take bets as high as $150,000 per hand. What makes baccarat dangerous for casinos is that, due to the large amounts of money bet and the thin house edge, players have the potential to win serious money at the casino’s expense. Most serious players, then, stick to player or banker. There is a third bet, tie, which, if both hands equal the same number, pays off eight to one, but it has a much larger house edge-over 14 percent. Why are high rollers attracted to baccarat? In addition to the cultural reasons Zender outlined, the game has one of the lowest hold percentages in the casino, with an average house advantage of about 1.2 percent on banker and player bets.

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