FLASH1296 said:
If you think that Baccarat can be beaten by card counting you are sadly mistaken.
I suggest that you read the appropriate chapter in "Theory of Blackjack", 6th edition, by Peter Griffin
You do own a copy, don't you ?
Baccarat is beatable (Through card counting) by monitoring subsets of cards on the Tie bet towards the end of the shoe.
John May's 'Baccarat for the Clueless' covers this extensively.
Examples of such subsets and their corresponding advantages are given below:
"Card subset name: 10's + 5's
Card
Value 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number 128 0 0 0 0 32 0 0 0 0
Tie Bet Advantage = 340.30936%
Card subset name: 10's + 6's + 4's
Card
Value 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number 128 0 0 0 32 0 32 0 0 0
Tie Bet Advantage = 152.01169%
Card subset name: 10's + 8's + 9's
Card
Value 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number 128 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 32 32
Tie Bet Advantage = 88.93232%
Card subset name: 10's + 6's + 7's + 8's
Card
Value 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number 128 0 0 0 0 0 32 32 32 0
Tie Bet Advantage = 47.61894%
Card subset name: 10's + 3's + 6's + 9's
Card
Value 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number 128 32 0 32 0 0 32 0 0 32
Tie Bet Advantage = 8.21853%
Card subset name: all-even valued cards
Card
Value 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number 128 0 32 0 32 0 32 0 32 0
Tie Bet advantage =62.02323%
Card subset name: all-even valued cards+5's
Card
Value 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Number 128 0 32 0 32 32 32 0 32 0
Tie Bet Advantage = 6.25045%"
Unfortunately, such advantages occur infrequently so you need a large enough spread to take advantage of them when they occur.
Quote from John May:
"Simulation data on computer-perfect analysis of the tie wager shows that if you can find a game where the last hand will be dealt from a 10-card subset, you can obtain a 1% advantage with a 45-1 spread, assuming you can detect favourable situations accurately.
We can therefore deduce that the game can be beaten because baccarat, as a general rule, has nothing like the heat associated with blackjack. You can spread up to the table maximum and down again, indeed you can sit out hands, no one will care. As David Sklansky wrote in Getting The Best Of It "There is not yet any paranoia among the casinos regarding counting...Players can bet anywhere from $5 up to $50,000 at any time. " ($50,000 is actually pretty conservative for bac nowadays). Obviously, if you could only make one $50,000 bet a year with a 100% edge, your EV for that year is still $50,000.
Naturally, the combination of large bets, an absence of heat, and huge advantages on individual hands, can make the game very profitable."