The Bad Design of Baccarat

## The appeal of baccarat

Baccarat is similar to a coin flip - Player or Banker is like Heads or Tails. The appeal is over a coinflip is twofold:

* Even though only one side wins, it's not just "heads" or "tails". There is a more complicated process in revealing the winner. There is also tie.
* The gambler's fallacy is often used to predict the next results from previous results.

However, it is badly designed, because it evolved from a different game which is no longer played. Most of its negative features are vestigial.

## History of Baccarat

The modern variation of Baccarat found in all casinos worldwide, Punto Banco, descends from the old variation, Chemin de Fer, which is almost never played anymore. In Chemin, players are given 2 cards, where face cards are equal to 10, and their total is modulo 10, that is, removing the left digit. So 6 plus 4 is 0, and 6 plus 5 is 1. The players can hit (take a third card) or stay (not take a third card). The banker then decides to hit or stay based on a set of predetermined rules.

## Modern Baccarat

Modern baccarat involves two hands, Player and Banker, which represent an imaginary player and imaginary banker. The players can bet on either side. The player hits under 6 and the banker hits based on a complicated rule set, based on the player's third card. The banker is more likely to win by around 1%, so there is a 5% commission on banker wins so that the banker bet also has a house edge. Players keep track of the banker and player wins, using the gambler's fallacy to assume future results based on past results.

## Baccarat Problem 1: Player-Banker Confusion

It does not make sense to call the sides Player and Banker because they have nothing do to with the actual Player and actual Banker. This confuses new players.

## Baccarat Problem 2: Who Wins?

Not only do you have to add two numbers together, but you have to follow a maze of complicated rules to decide when Banker hits.

## Baccarat Problem 3: Commission

Because of the Banker's higher chance of winning, Banker bets have a 5% fee. This is bad for three reasons.

1. The first is that it makes the house edge visible. The house edge should be invisible, like with Player, who is slightly less likely to win. When the house edge is visible, you can make it far higher - casual slot players cannot tell the difference between a 3% and 16% edge.
2. The second is that the house edge seems far higher than it is. Players do not always keep in mind that the banker is more likely to win. So a 5% commission seems like a 5% house edge. It's quite a literal one - the casino visibly steals $5 from your $100 win.
3. Third, it is bad for the dealer, who has to calculate 5% of a bet and take that off. This takes away time from gambling.

## Baccarat Problem 4: Two Cards

The two cards must be added and then modulo 10'd. This is equivalent to drawing one card. The second card is pointless.

## Baccarat Problem 5: Unequal Chance / Edge

The Banker is more likely to win, which encourages technical gamblers to only bet Banker, which makes the game boring.

It also punishes gamblers for their natural tendency of using the gambler's fallacy. For example, if there is a row of 19 player wins, betting Player on the 20th time would still be irrational, because Banker is always more likely. But if both are equal, it does not matter which side is bet, so technical gamblers are not punished for avoiding the gambler's fallacy. They will have no problem betting streaks or patterns because the edge is the same.

## Baccarat Problem 6: Cards

Cards have two major problems.

The first problem with cards is counting. No matter how many decks you use, when you remove a card from the shoe, that card is less likely to come up again. This allows any game with cards to be counted, which eventually gives an advantage against the casino. No matter how hard counting is, no matter how slight the advantage against the casino is (as in winning 10 cents an hour), the possibility of a negative expected value exists. Therefore, it is irrational for the casino to host a game with cards unless they are in a continuous shuffle machine, which brings us to the next problem.

The second problem with cards is that they have to be thrown out. Players expect clean cards, and cards quickly get dirty. Baccarat players in Macau are allowed to tear bad cards into pieces. If you are running a clean and professional casino, you must throw out every card after it is used. This means huge money spent on thousands of decks of cards each week, and a massive amount of paper waste.

## Player-Banker confusion solution: Rename to Blue and Red.

The reason Right and Left wouldn't work is because gamblers and dealers are stupid, and both have opposite lefts and rights.

## Who Wins? and Two Cards solution: No hitting. Optionally, only draw one card.

This makes the game way simpler for player and dealer.

## Commission and Unequal Chance solution: No hitting, push on certain wins

When there are no hits, or both Red and Blue have the same rules for hitting, the chance is equal. But where is the edge? When 1 wins against 0, the money is not doubled, it is just a push. The player who bet on 0 is not bothered because he would have lost anyways. The player who bet on 1 is not bothered because it's as if there were a tie.

1 pushing against 0 is about a 1% edge. Note: You must account for the face cards. There is thus a 4/13 chance of getting 0 and a 1/13 of any other number.

## Cards solution: Icosahedrons

The icosahedron is the platonic solid with the most faces: 20 triangles. It thus makes a very good dice. Coincidentally, half of 20 is 10. So when dropping the left digit, it functions as a baccarat hand or a single baccarat card.

But, you may ask, how is this cheaper than cards? Where can we find a bunch of multicolored, red and blue, icosahedral dice that have been manufactured with the left digit removed? There are thousands, for sale right now, for cheap. Why? Because they're used in Dungeons and Dragons for whatever reason.

## Bonus Solution: Honeycomb bead road

Players sometimes guess which card comes next by using the Bead Road, which is a square tiling. If there are red squares on the left and right of an empty square, the player might bet red. However, in a square tiling, it's possible for no sides of any square to be the same color (red, blue, red, blue...). This is solved by hexagon tiling, the same tiling seen in honeycombs. With two colors, no matter how the colors are distributed, all hexagons will touch a same-colored hexagon, making everything look like an obvious pattern both beforehand and after.