Live baccarat is already played at a fairly fast pace. Each round of the standard game, from the time when the cards are dealt to the moment when the wins are paid out, lasts just 48 seconds. Now though, there is the option of speeding up the rate of play even further. The speed version pretty much cuts the playing time in half. In this variant, every round takes a mere 27 seconds, and the difference is palpable.

No sooner have you placed your bets than the cards are being drawn, and the winner’s names are scrolling up the screen. As you can imagine, this faster style of playing really hypes up the sense of anticipation. There certainly isn’t any time to get bored during the rounds!

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Evolution Gaming’s Live Speed Baccarat

The leading provider for Live Speed Baccarat is, without doubt, Evolution Gaming. A quick browse around the websites will soon show that this company’s version is the one that is listed at the majority of the online casinos. The game is played with eight standard 52-card decks, and the values attributed to the cards during the rounds adhere to the regular rules. The aces count as 1, numbers 2 to 9 are valued by their pips, and 10s and faces are worth zero. The rounds continue until the cut card is dealt. After this, the cards are shuffled, or the shoe is swapped.

Evolution Gaming and the Various Onscreen Options

In Speed Baccarat, Evolution Gaming allows you to personalize the layout to suit your playing style. If you prefer a bigger wagering area, you can adjust the screen settings by clicking on the camera symbol. This allows you to ‘switch view’, so that the dealer window becomes smaller and the betting options have a larger display. The number of players that are participating in each of the rounds is shown on the screen, and you can follow the wagers that are being made in this way.

At the end of every round, the list of winners scrolls up the screen, so you can see how your fellow participants are getting on! The live chat facility allows you to communicate with the dealer during the game. You can follow your progress in the rounds under the history button on the top right-hand side of the screen.

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The Betting Options and Payouts in Live Speed Baccarat

In Evolution Gaming’s Live Speed Baccarat, as is customary, you have the option of wagering on the banker, the dealer, or on a tie. The third card rules are applied, depending on the total value of each hand. The optimal return to player rate for this variant is 98.94%, and this calculation is based on the best possible strategy for the banker.

A wager on the player’s hand pays out at evens, but the banker’s hand is adjusted to account for the house edge. This is set at 1:0.95, allowing for a 5% commission. A tie is paid out at 8:1. When both the player and the banker hands have the same value, the round is considered to be a push and the wagers are returned.

Placing Side Bets and Calculating the Return to Player Rates

There are several side bets that can be placed during Speed Baccarat, although the rapidity of the rounds leaves very little opportunity for planning a defined strategy! Even so, some of these can be very lucrative, and if you’ve found a system that you like, you might wish to stick with it. The side wagers are next to the main bets on the screen, so you can just click on the choice that you have decided upon. You will be able to bet on the player or the banker’s two cards being a pair, or on them being identical in suit and number.

The odds for this increase to 200:1 if you wager that both the banker and the player will draw identical pairs. There is also a banker and player bonus. This is based on the differences between the value in the two hands. For instance, if there is a 7-point difference, the payout is 6:1, for 8 points, this rises to 10:1, and for 9 points, it becomes 30:1.

The Scorecards and the Patterns in the Roads

Many baccarat enthusiasts like to look for trends in the way that the cards are being played, and in the live games, this is made easier with the inclusion of the scorecards. These run along the bottom of the screen in Evolution Gaming’s Speed Baccarat, and they take the form of five different grids, which are known as roads. Both the Big Road and the Bead Road show the results of the rounds, although they each use a different format.

The Bead Road

The bead road is shown on the left of the screen at the bottom and uses solid circles to keep count of the wins. Red denotes a banker win, blue shows that the player hand won the round, and a green circle indicates a tie. A blue dot in a circle shows that the hand was a pair – red is for the banker, and blue is for the player.

The Big Road

The Big Road is shown on the right and uses outlined circles to mark the results. Every time there is a change in winner, a new column is started. This system makes it easy to identify any winning runs that might be occurring during play. An overview of the total wins is displayed in the left-hand corner at the bottom of the screen.

Playing Speed Baccarat Alongside the Standard Version

If a 27-second round of Live Speed Baccarat isn’t quite enough to keep you entertained, in some venues, you can opt to play two different games concurrently. This is done by clicking on the ‘add table’ button, which is at the bottom of the screen on the right-hand side. This takes you back to the lobby where you can pick something else from the selection there. You can choose another of Evolution Gaming’s titles, or you could even go for something else entirely.

Both games will now be shown on your screen and will run simultaneously. If you wish to return to a single version, it’s easy enough to do. You simply click the red cross in the corner of the one you want to cancel, and you’ll be back as you were.

A Rapid Lowdown on the Benefits of Live Speed Baccarat!

Live Speed Baccarat is the perfect choice if you like your card action to be fast and furious. This version keeps to the standard rules, and so it’s easy to follow. However, with a new round starting approximately every 27 seconds or so, the pace is quick, and it leaves little time for pondering on your next move. Many players feel that this faster rate of play adds to the excitement and takes the game into a whole new level of suspense. It’s certainly worthy of consideration – if you’ve got a few minutes to spare, that is!

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Why is Baccarat so popular? Some might point to the obvious like it’s easy to play, or it’s beneficial to players with its low house edge, or James Bond made it look cool. But surely it must take more than just a simplistic gameplay for it to stand the test of time and transition from the 15th century soldier bivouacs to the glamorous casinos of Las Vegas and today’s cutting-edge online platforms with dazzling live dealers. Let’s first have a look at how it all started.

Early Origins – Chinese Games and Ancient Roman Rituals

Despite it being one of the most popular and oldest card games across the world, Baccarat’s origin remains unclear. The first written record of the game is from the 19th century, so all other accounts about it prior are mere hearsay. Still, the possible scenarios of how the game came into existence are quite interesting. According to one, Baccarat may have derived in part from some non-card games such as the Chinese Pai Gow game which was played with tiles instead of cards. This is mainly based on some correlation between the meaning of Pai Gow (make nine) and nine being the best score in Baccarat as well. It cannot be substantiated by historic evidence, however.

Another presumption, again based on the number nine, traces Baccarat’s roots to Ancient Rome and a ritual in which vestal virgins would cast a dice to determine their faith. Rolling 8 or 9 signified the future of a high priestess, 6 or 7 meant that her vestal virgin would have to be revoked, while any other number would cost her her life as she had to walk into the sea and drown. Even if the number nine was somehow acquired in baccarat through some of these games and rituals, it still doesn’t answer why baccarat is played with cards and not dice today. So, let’s fast forward to the late 13th century when Marco Polo returned to Italy from his expeditions.

Humble Beginnings in Italy

The “play of cards at tables” was first described in a French manuscript dated to the 1330s. Before the invention of the printing press, card games were hardly a popular activity mainly due to the scarcity of playing cards. They had to be either hand-painted or block printed by using a carved wooden block as a stamp – a Chinese technique used for Pai Gow tiles which Marco Polo introduced to Italy in the late 1290s. With the invention of the printing press, playing cards became more widely spread as they were printed in packs of 78. Known as The Devil’s Picture Books, playing cards were now more abundant. New card games proliferated and older games were adapted to be played with cards, Baccarat being one of them.

Although Baccarat is often considered to have originated in France, historic evidence points to Italy as the birthplace of the game. Tarrochi was a card game played in Italy in the 1300s and although there’s no proven correlation between it and Baccarat, Tarrochi could in fact be the predecessor of all card games. Felix Falguiere was an Italian man who is considered to have invented the modern form of Baccarat using Tarot cards. Another game popular in Italy at the time – Macao, which was played to the total of nine – is often referred to as Italian Baccarat and could be the game from which modern-day Baccarat was derived. Le Her is another game that could be the origin of the oldest form of Baccarat, as they’re both fixed-number games aiming for the highest score. Le Her was a card game played by two players – each dealt only one card. The cards had values 1 to 13, Kings being the highest rank and the instant winner. Each player could exchange their card if it was anything else than a King which is similar to the additional card drawing in Baccarat.
In the 19th century, another game was pointed out as a predecessor of Baccarat when Hoyle’s Official Rules of Card linked it to the Vingt-et-un games, which is French for 21 and yes, thus ultimately bringing the behemoth Blackjack forward in the family tree. The game described in this book is actually Baccarat en Banque. In the 1911’s edition of the Hoyle books, The Official Rules of Card Games Up to Date, there is a clear distinction between Baccarat en Banque and Chemin de Fer and they’re listed as separate games.

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Baccarat in France – A Noble albeit Illegal Pastime

Baccarat is widely regarded as a French game so let’s have a look at how the Baccarat situation in La République unfolded. As the stories go, Baccarat was introduced in France by soldiers returning from the Italian conflicts during the 1490s. Supposedly, the game quickly became popular with the French nobility. Two versions of Baccarat – Baccarat en Banque (Baccarat Deux Tableux) and the non-banking Chemin de Fer were played during the Napoleonic era. Such was the interest they garnered that even after Louis Phillip made casinos illegal in 1837, they continued to be played in houses running underground gambling operations outside the law, while retaining popularity in Europe.

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Considering the phrase Chemin de Fer means “iron way” or “railway” we could make an educated guess that this version became popular after 1832 when the first railroad in France was opened. However, there are no period documents that actually prove it – the name could have been added later on, for all we know – so we just have to assume that Baccarat en Banque is the older version. The first mention of Baccarat was in 1847 when Charles Van-Tenac included a 13-page mathematical analysis of the game – the first printed one ever – in his Album des jeux.

Across the Atlantic and Over the Pacific – Baccarat Arrives in America

If you research the origin of Baccarat in the United States, you will find articles and documents that point to 1911 as the year of the first Baccarat game played in an American gambling establishment. This statement is backed by John Scarne, Steve Forte, and other respected authors and card games experts who have come to grips with subject of Baccarat. However, these statements and assumptions are easily rebuffed by some period newspaper publications. The first printed record of Baccarat being played in the United States was in 1871. An article in the New York Times described the Club-house at Long Branch where visitors were flocking around the “faro spread, the roulette table and the Baccarat board.” Another article again in the New York Times, this time from 1899 chronicled the arrest of 30 Frenchmen playing Baccarat, which means that the game was being played in the United States decades earlier than originally thought. Despite these mentions, Baccarat is generally considered to have made its American debut in the early 1900s. John Scarne describes Chemin de Fer being played in 1911 in New York, adding that it was nowhere near as popular as the other banking games Blackjack and Craps that were played by American servicemen during WWI.

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First Reports of Baccarat in the USA

Although the early references in the New York Times describe Baccarat en Banque and not Chemin de Fer, it’s still an interesting fact that Baccarat was played in the United States decades earlier than originally considered. Still, Baccarat was completely absent from the Assembly Bill which legalized gambling in 1931. When the Sands opened a table in 1958, the version that was played was Chemin de Fer (often referred to as Chemmy). It was a non-banking game where the casino collected a rake on the winning bets which is probably what Mark Twain was referring to when he said he would have stayed at the table if he could borrow the croupier’s oar. Baccarat wasn’t a major casino game until 1959 when Tommy Renzoni brought a new version called Punto Banco to Las Vegas. Originally developed at the Mar del Plata casino in Argentina in the early 1950s, this version is the game Baccarat played today at most casinos in the USA, the UK, and Australia.

Baccarat in Nevada – First Games at the Vegas Strip

On November 20th 1959, the Las Vegas Sands made casino history as it opened its first Punto Banco table. The evening took off steeped in promotional glitz and glam but came to a rough end, with the casino losing a quarter of a million dollars. Fortunately, the owners weren’t put off by the shaky start and decided to keep the game long enough to make a sustainable profit. In the decades to follow, Baccarat retained an air of exclusivity as in the 1970s, there were only 15 tables at the entire Vegas strip, most of which were open part-time, so the only way to get a seat was to be rich or famous, preferably both.

Popularity of the Game Today

The early Baccarat games played at the Vegas strip in the 1960s were not exactly the Punto Banco variation Renzoni had brought from South America. The initial version of Baccarat offered a side bet on natural hands and no Tie bets. Instead of chips, casinos accepted cash wagers and for the sake of convenience, the dealers would apply a soap-like substance on the bills that made them lay flat on the table. The wax bills, however, weren’t accepted in some banks and shops, so by the early 1970s most Baccarat tables were operating with chips. But that wasn’t the only difference from today’s gameplay and overall ambience.

Part of the allure of the game was due to the glamorous shills – lovely young ladies who actually played on the table with minimum wagers, drawing the cards from the shoe and the interest of gamblers, as well. Nowadays, you won’t see such casino employees except at some poker casinos. Baccarat has changed a lot through the years and its popularity in Asia has rendered it more vibrant and dynamic, albeit heavily reliant on superstition, spawning different variations with fast-paced gameplay, additional features, and side bets to take the excitement up a notch.

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