Card Counting Commission Free Baccarat Variations

Published Time: 2013-12-17

There are two common commission free variations of the basic game of baccarat. Each leaves the drawing rules unchanged. Each pays winning Player bets even money, maintaining a house edge of 1.2351% on winning Player bets (assuming an eight-deck shoe). The key feature of these variations is that each has a payout reduction for a distinguished winning Banker bet. This payout reduction substitutes for taking a commission. The upside is a faster game with fewer payout errors.

When considering card counting this type of commission free variation, it’s clear that there is no additional vulnerability for Player wagers. After all, nothing has changed about the Player bets. As for card counting Banker bets, there is a new possibility to consider for each variation. In ordinary baccarat, if no commission is collected on winning Banker bets, then the player would have a 1.2351% edge over the house on Banker bets. The key is to try to find opportunities to realize a portion of that edge.

Recall that in traditional baccarat, the house edge for winning Banker bets is 1.0579%.

Commission Free Variation #1:

A Banker winning total of six pays 1-to-2.
House edge for Banker bets: 1.4581%.

Variation #1 yields a house edge on Banker bets that is 37.8% higher than in traditional baccarat. This variation is widespread throughout Asia and other jurisdictions worldwide. The downside is that smart players know that the house edge on Banker bets is higher, so these players avoid tables with this rule. Empty tables are never a good thing. However, in some casinos this commission free variation represents the majority of low/medium-limit tables and generates considerably higher profits than ordinary baccarat at the same limits.

In Variation #1, a Banker winning total of six cannot occur without a draw by the Player hand. A shoe rich in 7’s, 8’s and 9’s does not produce as many drawing hands. Moreover, if any one of these cards is drawn, then the total cannot be six. On the other hand, the edge to be overcome by counting is nearly 40% higher than ordinary baccarat. A would-be card counter has a mountain to climb.

I developed the card counting system (0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, -3, -2, -1, 0) based on an examination of the EORs for the Banker bet. It has a reasonably good betting correlation of 0.951. I simulated one hundred million (100,000,000) eight-d