Now that you should have everything in mind, let’s take a look at playing the basic baccarat betting strategy (player 1) and advanced baccarat strategy #3 (player 2) from an actual simulated game on the computer.

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We will bet £100 as a base unit. We stake both players to £20,000. Player 1 will stop when he’s 20 units up or 100 down. Player 2 will quit when he’s £3,200 down (thirty-two tries for a long run).

Shoe 1 : P1 ends at £20,270 and P2 at £19,800

Shoe 2 : P1 has £19,860 and P2 has £19,460

Shoe 3 1 has £20,330 and P2 has £19,250

Shoe 4 : P1 has “20,515 and P2 has £19,050

Shoe 5 : P1 has £21,080 and P2 has £18,635

Shoe 6 : P1 has £21,260 and P2 has £18,835

Shoe 7 : P1 has £20,850 and P2 has £17,915

Shoe 8 : P1 has £21,235 and P2 has £17,715

Shoe 9 : P1 has £21,520 and P2 has £17,300

To this point, Player 1 using the basic strategy is up £1,520 while Player 2 with the advanced strategy #3 has lost twenty-seven bets in a row. Player 2 has only five more bets and he will be tapped out.

Shoe 10: This shoe starts out BPBPBBPPB, which puts Player 1 up another £195. The next hands are BB, which makes Player 1 lose £100. Then there’s another Bank, so Player 2 plays for a run of nine.

The hands go BBBBB, as the series makes nine in a row, Player 2 takes all his money off the Bank, then puts £100 on Bank again. Player wins, At the end of the shoe, Player 1 has £21,305, and Player 2 has £20,145.

So, at the end of 10 shoes, about 8 hours or so of usual playing time, we’re up £1,450, including paying off commissions. Now take a break and perform what we call the toilet test. We know that 1 bad shoe could lose £1,200. We could have 5 bad shoes in a row. I haven’t hit my goal of up £2,000 for Player 1, but I’m within five bets of it.

Right now we’re a winner. The basic strategy gave us £1,305 of our winnings, and we made £145 on the advanced strategy #3. £145 doesn’t sound much, but at the end of the 8 th shoe we were down £2,700 which makes it look a whole lot better.

At this point, you may want to consider that if you played any longer, you would risk £1,450 to make £500, which is precisely what you would be doing if you played again. If you hit just a typical losing shoe, you may lose £600 or so.

Now we would say walking away at this point is probably the best thing to do but human nature being human nature, you may find yourself trying to rationalize playing longer.

Okay, we were playing £100 per hand, so now play £5 per hand. Take just 20 chips as your stake. If you lose the 20, you’re down just £100. That should take care of your need to lose.

This time go back and just play the advanced strategy 3. With this stake, you have 20 more shots at hitting the nine run. Now you’re back at the baccarat table, this time the one with the £5 limit.

Shoe 1: Down to £70

Shoe 2: Down to £65

Shoe 3: Down to £50

Shoe 4: Down to £40

Shoe 5: Down to £10

Shoe 6: Tapped out in the middle of the shoe

These are the results as they came out of the computer. You might have gotten lucky and the one run of eight in the first shoe you played might have gone to nine. It didn’t and no nine+ runs came up after that. You took your chances to hit the big win and you went bust. You bet small, so only £100 was lost. At £100 per hand you would have lost £2,000.

You’re now up £1,350 after playing almost 16 shoes. The £100 you lost when you should not have stayed is a cost of your lesson about the fallibility of human nature. Its remarkably easy to turn a win into a loss by not going home. At some point in every series of play, unless you are remarkably unlucky, you should be up something. It’s up to you to leave when you are.

In the casino, you have only seconds to decide what bet to make. You don’t have the luxury of sitting there and pondering your next bet. There are literally seconds to make up your mind. All this means is you have to play the “what if” game.

By playing the “what if” game, we mean that you have to be able to determine what you will bet ahead of time. By “ahead of time”, we mean at least 2 hands. If you practiced mental bets tactic before, you have a good start already.

Let’s take the example of the last computer- simulated shoe. It started with six chops, so you now have B7 staring in your face. Six consecutive singles and no run as yet at the beginning of the shoe. By the third chop, you should be thinking about your bet if it makes a long run. You should also decide early on what you will do if you lose. You should decide now what your next two bets will be and how many units you will bet.

Planning ahead is important, because the game goes very quickly. There are many distractions in the casino. You also have to keep your scorecard updated constantly. Staying ahead of the curve also helps you stick with your betting strategies.

Practice

The casino is no place to practice. If you have a computer, get a baccarat game check our baccarat partners and practice playing shoes. Keep a good scorecard and try the betting strategies. Keep track of your wins and losses. Practice quitting when you are ahead or behind. The more you practice, the better your ability will be to be a winner at the real tables.