6 Reasons Why You Lose When You Play Baccarat

In the long run, there’s nothing that you can do to win when you play roulette. The only things you can do are control and limit your losses. But this is true for almost all casino games.

Fortunately, controlling your losses when you play baccarat is easy. All you have to do is learn the reasons why you’re losing too much money.

Here are six reasons why you lose money when you’re playing baccarat as a beginner. You’re also going to learn what you need to do to correct each of these six mistakes before you finish this article.

1 – You Bet on a Tie

With only three options when you play baccarat, this is one of the simpler games in the casino. Add in the fact that you don’t have to do anything else after choosing which bet option to use, and baccarat is one of the easiest games to play.

One of the bet options is better than the other two, and if you always make the best bet when you play baccarat, the casino edge is low. In fact, the only casino games that have a lower casino edge are usually blackjack and video poker. And not every blackjack game and video poker game offers a lower casino edge.

The tie bet option at the baccarat table usually pays 9 to 1, so it doesn’t look bad. If you play baccarat often, you know that ties don’t happen too often, but they do still happen. So, a return of 9 to 1 looks decent. The problem is that the casino edge is higher than 10% on the tie.

2 – You Bet on Yourself

Now you know that the tie bet at the baccarat table is a bad deal. This leaves two other bet options. The truth is that both of your other options are decent.

The player and banker options both are better in the return area than all other casino games except the blackjack and video poker games I mentioned in the previous section.

When I gamble, I’m not interested in the second best option, so when I play baccarat, I only make one bet. The bet that I always make is on the banker.

The player bet is only a little bit worse than the banker, but I don’t want to give up a single penny more than I need to.

If you get bored and want to change things up and make a player bet from time to time, it’s not going to kill your bankroll. But I still don’t recommend doing it.

I know it gets boring playing baccarat. But boredom is your enemy, especially when it makes you think about doing things that make you lose more money.

Making a tie bet is so bad that you can’t afford to ever do it. While the player bet isn’t as bad, you still shouldn’t do it either.

3 – You’re Betting Too Much for Each Hand

You can use some simple math to see that how much you bet is directly related to how much you lose. I’m going to show you this using a few simple examples, but the main thing you need to understand is that the more you bet, the more you lose.

This is true when you play baccarat or any other casino game when you don’t have an edge. And you need to understand that you don’t have an edge in any casino game unless you’re using effective advantage gambling techniques.

I’m using an edge of 1% for these examples because it’s an easy number to work with and it’s close to the edge that the casino has on the banker bet.

If you bet $40 on a hand, you lose $.40 on the hand on average. If you bet $200 on a hand, you lose $2 on the hand on average.

The best bet size when you play baccarat is always the table minimum.

4 – You’re Playing Too Fast Online

When you play baccarat in a land-based casino, the game plays faster than most other table games. But there’s still a limit to how many hands you can play in an hour. This limit is under 100.

But when you play baccarat online, you can play many more hands every hour. It’s possible to play 600 or more hands every hour when you play online baccarat.

Many baccarat players gamble online so they can make smaller bets on every hand. You just learned in the last section that smaller bet amounts are smart. But you can negate this benefit by playing too fast.

If you play 100 hands an hour in a land-based casino betting $10 on each hand, your total risk in an hour is $1,000. If you bet $2 a hand playing online baccarat, but you play 600 hands in an hour, your total risk is $1,200.

Using the same 1% example as I used in the last section, this means that you’re going to lose $10 every hour in the land-based casino and $12 every hour you’re playing online. Of course, if you simply play slower when you play online baccarat, you risk less and lose less.

5 – You Don’t Use Baccarat Bonuses

You already know the main benefits of playing baccarat online. The smaller bet limits at online baccarat tables are the main benefit, but the ability to play as slow as you want is another benefit.

The last benefit of playing online baccarat that I’m going to talk about is the availability of bonuses. It’s important to understand that you can’t use every online bonus to play baccarat. Some bonuses are only for certain games.

The only way to know if you can use an online bonus to play baccarat is by reading the rules. Each online bonus has a long list of rules that can be painful to read associated with the bonus.

Everything in the rules is important, but the most important thing is how you clear the bonus offer. You’re not allowed to get your money out of the online casino before you clear the bonus offer.

6 – You’re Not Getting Baccarat Rewards

Most baccarat gamblers just play baccarat. They don’t do anything beyond playing the game that can help them control their losses.

In the last section, you learned how baccarat bonuses can help with your bankroll and help limit your losses if you find the right bonus offers.

Here’s one more thing that every baccarat gambler needs to use that can help control your losses.

You can get rewards from casinos when you play baccarat. Look for the rewards club in every casino where you play baccarat. Some online casinos offer baccarat rewards, and almost all live casinos offer rewards to baccarat gamblers.

Each casino has their own name for their rewards club. If you can’t find the sign up area, ask someone that works for the casino, or if you play online, send a message to the support department.

This makes the effective edge 1% or close to it. This is one reason why I’ve been using 1% in the examples. Check out our blog to learn more about baccarat bonuses and if they are worth it.

Conclusion

Baccarat is fairly simple, but most players make mistakes that cost them money. The tie bet is always bad and costs you money every time you make it. When you bet on the player hand, it doesn’t cost as much money in losses, but it’s still not as good as the banker bet.

When you bet more than the table minimum, you’re putting too much money at risk, which leads to larger losses. The same thing is true when you play too many hands.

Finally, look for good baccarat bonuses and rewards programs that help you play longer and offset some of your losses.