Baccarat has a reputation for being one of the most sophisticated games in the casino. The game is played on a small table about the size of a craps table and it’s usually staffed by three casino employees: two dealers taking bets from players, and the croupier who directs the play of the hand and calls winning and losing hands. The objective is to wager on which hand will have a total value closest to nine. A winning Player bet pays out 1:1, a winning Banker bet pays even money (minus a five percent commission) and a winning Tie bet pays 8-1.

Unlike blackjack, where the player decides to stay or draw in a given situation, baccarat is decided by a set of rules called “tableaux” that dictate when a third card must be drawn and when a hand must stand. Dealers must memorize and follow these rules exactly.

When a baccarat hand is dealt, the values of the two cards are added together to determine the hand’s total value. Then, the game’s tableaux rules determine whether the hand will win, lose or tie. Each round of play is known as a coup and the bettors place their bets on either the banker’s hand, the player’s hand or a tie.

In the past, baccarat was a large-scale game that required a group of players all looking to make the same bets. It also took up a lot of space and casinos were not happy to simply act as controllers for this type of game. To solve this issue, a smaller version of the game was created and is the one we know today as mini baccarat.

While some players blame baccarat’s popularity on the movie James Bond, the game’s roots run deeper than that. Some believe it spun off from pai gow, the ancient Chinese tile game. Others claim that baccarat was invented by Italian gambler Felix Falguiere in the Middle Ages. Regardless of the actual origins, there is no doubt that baccarat has earned its reputation as an elegant and sophisticated game.

The game is easy to learn, and a baccarat scoreboard displays the results of all previous rounds of play. Players can also view the results of previous baccarat games at other tables and compare them to their own. This helps the players to make better betting decisions.

While many customers prefer to see their own baccarat results in front of them, several casino operators are moving towards pre-shuffled decks that are sealed into transparent carriers and secured with a security strap. While this is more time-costly than immediately cutting and dealing the pre-shuffled decks, it reduces many card control labor issues and increases customer security. Moreover, a final machine shuffle can be added to eliminate the need for manual shuffling of individual cards. This process is being embraced by many casinos around the world.