A test of backing Banker all the way at baccarat, and how the "5%" gouge makes it a very bad idea!

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Baccarat may not be my favorite casino table game, but target betting certainly likes it!

Running queries for data on the effect of backing Player only, Banker only and WBL has in effect turned the Rodriguez and Jones combined data sets of 315,000 outcomes into a monster sample of 945,000, so it was well worth the effort.

Now the job's done, I am relieved to be able to confirm that there are no big surprises.

Many baccarat veterans recommend ignoring the Player option entirely, and my test indicates that if winning more often than you lose floats your boat, then that is the way to go.

But brace yourself for a very large "5%" commission tab that will slash your overall winnings by more than 80% (repeat, 80%, not 5%) and leave you with profits that pale against those achieved by the guy at the same table who used target betting to back just Player every time.

My baccarat buddy (the one who suggested cranking up the EOS bet to recover commission fees after a recovery) insisted from day one that the gouge or "vig" or whatever else it might be called was a non-issue.

I'd say that a penalty that slashes a $3.3 million win by more than four fifths is definitely an issue, but I don't play baccarat much so I will leave it to readers to decide.

I have known for a long time that target betting will prevail even if the outcome of individual rounds is reversed (win to loss, red to black, odd to even or whatever) but have never given it a whole lot of thought because blackjack does not offer that option.

It may be possible to apply the Wobble (WBL or win before last) method to 21, but I figure I have enough stuff to keep in my head when I am playing blackjack, and adding more might cause a gray-matter meltdown! So, I have never tried it. And I am hoping that having said that, I won't be tempted to investigate further.

In the chart and summary below, avoiding commission is confirmed as the right way to tackle baccarat, as long as target betting is the primary ingredient.

"Banker Only" sailed through the test with barely a speed bump, but that's not a surprise because (as we all knew before we got into this) Banker wins more often than Player.

I am still in touch with my former baccarat partner, who steadfastly refuses to do the smart thing and step up to blackjack, and he tells me that in Macao and other exotic gambling locations, commission has been replaced by a rule that gives the house a win on a 6-6 tie.

That change might be better for target betting, but somehow I doubt it. Let's face it, casinos very rarely make rules changes that benefit the player!

One of these days I might be able to evaluate the switch, but I have never bothered to record ties, let alone recommend putting money on them, so that is not on my to-do list for the current decade at least.

To me, baccarat is like dancing in deep treacle compared to blackjack, but I know there are millions of aficionados out there and I recommend that they give disciplined target betting a try.

Here's the promised data...

(Click on the image to enlarge it)
I get a kick out of the fact that, commission aside, target betting kicked butt three ways.

But I am not surprised.

The method did encounter a "bust" backing Player only, and it is true to say that the crash 'n burn could have come along in the very first series. However, given 55,000 successful recoveries and just one fatal downturn, we can conclude that "coulda, woulda, shoulda" the three most pointless words in the gambling glossary, do not apply here.

It makes more sense to speculate about what would have happened if the house spike that cost target betting a million bucks in funny-money had been subjected to the damage control that most players instinctively apply in various ways when the going gets extra tough.

It's moot in any case, because most players would prefer odds of 55,000 to 1 in their favor to odds of 49.33 to 50.67 (-1.35%) against them. I am excluding those gamblers who bet as if losing is fun, of course!

An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you.
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