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A baccarat game is shown this year in the high-limit room at Hard Rock Hotel. The high-stakes game is reaping big profits for casinos.
Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010 | 2 a.m.
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Understanding the game
- Origins: Baccarat, pronounced bah-kah-rah, is a card game believed to have been introduced to France from Italy during the reign of Charles VIII of France, who ruled from 1483-1498.
- Outcomes: It is a simple game with only three possible outcomes — player, banker or tie. In the variation played in Las Vegas and Macau casinos, the casino banks the game at all times but has a low house edge. Players may bet on either the player or the banker, which are designations for the two hands dealt in each game. The object is to bet on the hand that totals closer to nine.
- The basics: The cards are dealt face down, one to the “player” first, then to the “banker.” And then the same again, so there are two cards each. Both cards in each hand are then turned over and added together and the dealer calls the total. The player and banker can then draw a single card or stand pat. The hand with the highest total wins. Tens and face cards all are worth zero points; all other cards are worth their face values, with the ace worth one point. If a total is more than 10, the second digit is the value of the hand. For example, a 9 and a 6, which total 15, make up a five-point hand.
An exclusive class of customer deserves a good deal of credit for the Strip’s first increase in reported gambling revenue since 2007 — high rollers who play a game that most Americans don’t pronounce correctly.
Baccarat, the high-stakes card game favored by James Bond, accounted for nearly 20 percent of the Strip’s gambling revenue in November, the Gaming Control Board announced last week. Strip casinos reaped $92.7 million from baccarat players that month — a 136 percent increase from a year ago.
In November, baccarat players wagered a whopping $690.8 million at Strip resorts, about 14 percent of all the money bet in those casinos and an 84 percent increase compared with November 2008.
It was the latest evidence of a trend.
While Strip casinos made less money on most of their games last year, baccarat was an exception, and its momentum has been building. From August through November, each month’s baccarat revenue was more than 30 percent higher than it had been in the same month of 2008. Baccarat wagers rose by more than 40 percent in those months.
The trend was not lost on the Hard Rock Hotel. The larger high-limit room it opened the week before New Year’s Eve includes a secluded area designed to accommodate more baccarat tables than in years past.
But off-Strip, baccarat is a rarity. The game is mainly found in the high-limit rooms of the Strip casinos that cater to the wealthiest gamblers.
Baccarat can be an expensive business for casinos, given the money they have to spend to attract high rollers, which can include flights to and from the casino for the gambler and his family, complimentary suites, meals, gifts and other perks. Working against a small house edge of less than 2 percent, baccarat players can leave a big dent in a casino’s bottom line if they get lucky, especially if they are “whales” betting $100,000 a hand. Most casinos don’t offer baccarat for that reason — and because the number of people who play baccarat in the United States is relatively small.
Tens of thousands of people gamble at slots and blackjack tables in Las Vegas every year, but baccarat players number in the mere hundreds. Many of the Strip’s baccarat tables are empty much of the time and are mostly used on weekends or days that coincide with holidays or special events such as prizefights and major concerts.
A period that has consistently produced some of the most baccarat action for the Strip is one coming up next month — Chinese new year. Therein lies a key to what has been happening with baccarat on the Strip.
Beginning about four years ago, several Strip resorts started opening sister casinos in Macau, a province on the South China Sea. Macau casinos are dominated by baccarat tables in the same way that U.S. casinos are filled with slot machines.
Macau is the world’s most lucrative gambling destination thanks primarily to baccarat players. At Las Vegas Sands’ three Macau casinos, for example, the top high rollers, many of them baccarat players, wagered $16.7 billion in the third quarter of last year — about a billion more than gamblers wagered in all of the games offered on the Las Vegas Strip during that same period.
Most casino revenue on the Strip still comes from slot machines. But it’s a smaller percentage today than it was a few years ago, when the economy was booming and the masses had more to spend.
In 2005, the year before Steve Wynn opened Las Vegas’ first satellite casino in Macau, baccarat generated 11 percent of the Strip’s gambling revenue. For last year through November, the figure was a little more than 16 percent.
The combination of the Macau connection and the economic health of China and Hong Kong is boosting business at the Strip’s baccarat tables, according to industry experts.
While the U.S. recession contributed to the worst year on record for MGM Mirage, the corporation’s chief marketing officer, Bill Hornbuckle, said its business from international visitors, driven by Asian gamblers, may have hit a new high.
For Las Vegas Sands, it’s a tale of two worlds — baccarat versus everything else. Despite poor earnings from its Venetian and Palazzo resorts in Las Vegas, the company reported record third-quarter earnings from its Macau casinos, where it offers more baccarat than other games. And while the company’s other Las Vegas business segments tumbled, “premium” baccarat players at its Strip casinos wagered 4 percent more than during the same period a year ago.
On the Strip, Las Vegas Sands and the other casino giants are tight lipped about their high rollers, so ascertaining how many of their baccarat players come from Asia is difficult.
But Joel Simkins, a gaming stock analyst with Macquarie Securities, says Las Vegas casino operators cultivating customers in Macau “have more of an incentive to get them to come to Las Vegas.”
In Macau, access to high rollers is largely controlled by junket operators — third-party hosts who demand hefty commissions that eat away as much as 40 percent of the revenue that casinos get from VIPs, and casinos pay 33 percent less on their revenue in Nevada than they do in Macau, Simkins explains.
Las Vegas-based casino companies in Macau have had some success in attracting Chinese gamblers to the Strip, Hornbuckle said last week just before leaving for Macau, where his company opened a resort in December 2007.
“We have (marketing) people focused on those parts of the world that have not suffered the crisis that we have” in the United States, he said. China, the world’s largest emerging market, is the prime example.
Unfortunately, Asian baccarat players aren’t a big enough market segment to rescue the Strip from the downturn. Still, casino operators expect they will become a bigger profit center as casino companies work with tourism officials to boost the number of mainland Chinese who travel to Las Vegas.
Official statistics are unavailable, but visitors from China probably make up fewer than 300,000 of Las Vegas’ annual visitor traffic of more than 30 million people, Hornbuckle said. These visitors have to obtain travel visas from their government and those visas are hard to get. As a result, most of the tourists are members of China’s wealthy elite, and, Hornbuckle said, they have a significant effect on tourism disproportionate to their numbers.
Especially if they are baccarat players.
And, based on the illiterate Comment by gettocard, Americans (at least some) do not know how to spell or how to construct a sentence.
The whales will all move to Macau very soon and Las Bugsy will be high and dry. Overall, Bugsy's revenue trend is still looking like a cliff dive.
texexnv:
cliff dive? Looking at that bar graph of monthly gambling take shows me that vegas is only taking in 10% a month less than in 2005 (an unsustainable boom year). Looks more like the butterfly stroke than a nose dive to me. If you want to get some perspective on what a nose dive looks like, go visit Detroit.
I play baccarat frequently at the MGM's high limit room. I am with all asians. I am not asian. I don't understand a word they are saying except for monkey, however, I know how the game is dealt and can follow. I've done so good at times and got the oversized chips. The oversized chips are good.
Baccarat is a short term fun game. Like anything else-if you play it long enough-that 1% house edge will eat you alive.
I am a Pit Boss in a casino and I can report to everyone that business has picked up versus last year. In fact, people that were laid off have been re-hired and this is good news for Las Vegas!! For people who work in the industry, keep up the good work and show your appreciation to the players so they will see the value in choosing Las Vegas as their first choice for their next trip!!!
Baccarat will save Las Vegas.
How soon until the casinos start changing the rules to improve their odds? ala roulette, video poker, blackjack, etc.
I hope I'm wrong. If I want bad odds I can just go to the local casino. I don't need to fly across the country
If the trend flips around and the players start wiping the hotels in Baccarat, I am sure Harrah's and MGM will immediately tweak the game to give the house a bigger edge -- just like they did with Blackjack.
Think about this: Just a few hundred whales from China determine whether casinos win or lose millions? Come on now. JH
I am a caucasian American who routinely plays mini-baccarat, usually at a $1000-minimum table at Wynn, primarily because the "big" baccarat tables are filled entirely with Chinese who make you feel uncomfortable if you do not understand or participate in their series of bizarre rituals and protocols when they play the game. I have noticed that most Caucasian baccarat players, even high stakes one, tend to do the same (I rarely see any caucasians at the big baccarat tables). I think baccarat is a great game, and I personally have nothing against the Chinese, but if the casinos want to broaden its appeal to "Americans", I think they need to figure out some way to break down this cultural barrier. Sitting at a table of people who are all speaking a foreign language, and who can be downright rude to you because you choose to play the game your own way, takes a lot of the fund and desire out of playing the game. Sometimes it can be a great experience when you sit at a table with friendlier Chinese folks who make an effort to teach you their traditions and superstitions and make you a part of the action, so to speak, but more often than not, they do not.
Also, I play the game because of the low vig, as well as my interest in Mathematics, which is part of the strategy in playing baccarat. If the casinos "tweaked" the rules on baccarat to increase their hold, I would stop playing it.
I prefer Sic-Bow, over Burt baccarat, better odds can win $4.00 if lucky,
better than penny slots
Boomer, Anderson Illinois
Baccarat is the same as flipping a coin! I much prefer craps over ANY game of chance because they have not been able to screw the player too bad with the odds. If Vegas thinks high limit players alone are going to solve their current problems , they been smoking the pipe too long!
Thank you for the correct pronounciation.
For several years I have been pronouncing baccarat as written; bak-a-rat as the New Year of the Rat.
I agree with you environprotector! I tried to play once to see what the big deal was - WOW, is it ever boring! Flip a coin it is!! Craps is a thousand times more fun to play, but to each his own, and if Bac is helping us out, then - "MONKEY, MONKEY MONKEY!!!!"
I think it's reprehensible for the casino to hand out those cards and a pencil so the players can record the hands won. It leads them to believe that they can predict the outcome of future hands, as if the cards have memory. It really pisses me off.
They do the same at the roulette wheel now too.
I don't think that baccarat is boring if you bet 1000 a hand or more. But it's definetely a no-brainer and a no action game if you play it on a 5 or 10 dollar table. What's the point there?
The beauty of the game is that you can sit in a comfortable chair, get good treatment as long as you have the cash to play. The house edge is rather small and the swings are high. 1.4 per cent on the player and 1.2 per cent on the banker line, as far as I remember (including the ties). Therefore, you can't expect to lose a lot if you stick with 10 dollar bets and the house can't make a fortune on you. But if you raise the stakes and have the cash, huge swings are guaranteed. Once you hit a nice series of banker or player, you will feel the adrenalin come up and the chips pile up. If you hit a cold table, then it's time to say good night.
Over here, Italians and Orientals love this game, obviously because it's so simple and you can't make mistakes. On B-J you can only decrease your chances by poor playing, and I see it every day. On Baccarat , the odds don't vary. That's why an "idiot" has the same chances to win than a "pro". .....but what is a pro?
From Switzerland
If you eliminate from wagering on any tie bets, there is no "5% house edge" for the North American version of baccarat...the 5% "vig" is a casino commission for all banker winning hands.
Player wagers have a 1.24% house edge, banker wagers have a 1.06% house edge despite the 5 percent commission for the house, and tie wagers have a whopping 14.44% house edge....based on a six deck shoe of cards.
Baccarat is a unique game which can be trendy at times in a player's favor, and I also agree it is basically a coin flip game however press the money management issue to a tee and be willing to up and pull back, you can leave the baccarat table ahead more times vs a blackjack table.
Of course I am one of those "morons" that will hit the craps table, so much action along with so many ways I can wager while having more control....Most bets (Other than line wagers), I can increase, reduce, call off, or remove wagers, betting with or against the dice, but best of all I can HEDGE wagers just like in the sports book (parlay situations) to minimize or eliminate any potential losses and convert an established 'dont' wager into a win-win situation.
I am one that relates to card games being flat out boring and I do not wager on card games at all....although ol Lyle Stuart was an avid craps and bacarrat player and swears by wagering on only those two casino games for the best chance of winning.
Funny how baccarat means : "zero" - the only casino game that is named over having the worst hand.....No wonder why they chose the name blackjack over the name : bust.
All you people claiming that all baccarat is betting on the flip of a coin obviously have never played or studied the game. When you incorporate strategic betting patterns along with the fact that even a flipped coin will eventually repeat multiple times in a row, it becomes much more complex, much more strategic. Add big stakes, and there is your excitement. That is why it is the game of choice of billionaires and mathematicians. Perhaps all the poor petes on here trying to deride a game as stupid are the ones who are truly stupid after all, mocking something they don't understand.
I agree with bigdaddyj
There are these mysterious runs of series at which the house is losing rapidly and the players are happy. Hard to explain, but it happens. If you have deep pockets and no problems going through big swings then baccarat can be a very exciting game. Small bets is something for loser in this game, just like low limit poker for dreamers who believe hitting the bad beat jackpot would make them a day.
I hardly ever play this game but it's interesting to see these Orientals play and when they win it's even more exciting.
From Switzerland
AKsilvereagle. You are about right with your percentages. From what I learned, the house edge on the "Player" side is a bit higher than on "Banker". 1.40 rough v/s 1.20 per cent. But this does not include the ties, which will result in a push , and therefore a no lose situation unless you bet the tie bet. Since so and so many times tie "wins", the wagers on the other wagers push and therefore don't lose. Don't lose is not the same as winning but counts as no losing, and most casinos do not mention the 1.40 , respectively the 1.20 per cent edge, but rather the 1.24 and 1.06 per cent as the official house edge. ....which looks a bit nicer.
In the long run, I guess you're better off betting banker all the time, and hoping that this is your night and you can see banker win a bit more often than the other side :)
Greetings from Switzerland
Is the win really up or are collections up? At Christmas I was watching at Caesers and most people were only playing a hundred or two a hand. Where as a couple of years ago at Christmas they were playing thousands a hand with people waiting for a seat.