Of all the casino games out there, baccarat might be the most misunderstood. It looks intimidating at the table, but once you get the rules down, your first reaction is probably going to be — "wait, that's it?"
Here's the whole idea: there are two hands dealt, the Player and the Banker, and you're just picking which one lands closer to nine. That's literally the core of it.
The card values are easy to remember too. Two through nine count as face value, tens and face cards are worth zero, and aces count as one. If the total goes into double digits, you just drop the first digit — so seven plus eight equals fifteen, but in baccarat that's a five.
You've got four ways to bet. Player, Banker, Tie, or Pair (when the first two cards dealt are the same). Payouts work like this: Player wins pay 1:1, Banker wins pay out at 95% because the house takes a 5% commission, and Tie hits at 8:1 which sounds great until you look at how rarely it actually