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Table Games Variance in baccarat

Discussion in 'Table Games' started by BayouBengal, Jan 17, 2016.

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  1. BayouBengal

    BayouBengal VIP Whale

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  2. shifter

    shifter Degenerate Gambler

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    Are you going to flat bet just one side?

    I've seen one side 30 more than the other in one shoe.

    But normally it will be less than 20.

    So if you have 20 bets you should be able to play at least an hour.
     
  3. BayouBengal

    BayouBengal VIP Whale

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    I'd probably switch sides depending on my mood. I'm not attached to banker or player. I've never played at a live table, just the electronic dealer.
     
  4. RockyBalboa

    RockyBalboa Front Line Winner

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    Good question.

    With all the bacc stories on here I would like to give it a shot on my next trip.

    A question for shifter, if I may piggyback in your thread;

    I see you bacc players talk about recognizing a streak. What constitutes this and what do you look for in identifying one?
     
  5. shifter

    shifter Degenerate Gambler

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    Well if you switch sides indiscriminately you can lose every hand.

    I've done it for 12+ hands before.
     
  6. shifter

    shifter Degenerate Gambler

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    It depends on what you're looking for.

    There's lots of different patterns that show up on the various charts.

    The most basic obviously is one side winning many in a row.

    If player wins 12 in a row and you just keep betting player until you lose you can make a lot of money.

    On the other hand that doesn't happen very often. So if that's what you're waiting for, you might be waiting a long time and losing a lot in the meantime.
     
  7. RockyBalboa

    RockyBalboa Front Line Winner

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    Do you by default play the banker...like when starting a shoe? And then kind of stick with that side until you see a pattern develop? Like if you see player win three hands do you flip over to that side?
     
  8. shifter

    shifter Degenerate Gambler

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    Definitely not.

    I generally take free hands at the beginning until something develops.

    The strategies I employ are very complex and can't be summed up in a paragraph.

    They don't always work, you just have to hope to get lucky based on the way you play.
     
  9. RockyBalboa

    RockyBalboa Front Line Winner

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    Gotcha

    I'll give it a shot in March at V/P and see how it goes
     
  10. BayouBengal

    BayouBengal VIP Whale

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    I can't seem to find any free apps to play around with. Know of any? Want to use it to get a better feel for variance/swings.
     
  11. Count de Monet

    Count de Monet High-Roller

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    Michael Shackleford's site has it:

    http://wizardofodds.com/
     
  12. Bondy3

    Bondy3 High-Roller

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    lets treat bacc as a biased coin flip (betting on player because that makes the math easier)

    the formula for variance is npq
    the formula for standard deviation is sqrt(npq)

    n = number of hands
    p = probability of win
    q = probability of loss

    the probability of a win is aprox 0.493212 (from wizard of odds) therefor the probability of a loss is (1-0.493212), therefor pq = (0.493211501)(1-0.493211501)=0.24995391628.

    so the variance of each baccarat hand bet on player is 0.24995391628,

    now lets assume you bet on player for 1000 hands (a FULL day of gambling) you never vary your bet, you always flat bet and you always bet on player.

    then the standard deviation = sqrt(1000*0.24995391628)=15.8100.

    therefor for a full day of gambling, to have a 99% chance of not loosing your budget you should have enough to cover 3 standard deviations of swings, so you should bring 47.43 units for variance + the expected loss (in this case, 14 units for betting on 1000 hands of player), so you should bring 62 units to play a full day of bacc betting on player every time with a 99% chance of not losing your bankroll.

    I realize that you probably wont play exactly 1000 hands of Baccarat in a day (that would be a LONG day), but you can use these numbers to get an idea of how you can calculate what you should bring for your bankroll.
     
  13. BayouBengal

    BayouBengal VIP Whale

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    Thanks Bondy. I was looking to compare the variance and stuff relative to blackjack. 1000 hands is a lot. I think the average 6 deck shoe deals about 60 hands. For rating purposes don't casinos consider a shoe to be 1 hour? I'm thinking in 4 hours you'd see 240 to 280 hands. Would it be valid to divide your numbers by 1/4? 15 units seems really low. Also 62 units seems low for 1000 hands but in the end the numbers rule.
     
  14. speedfile

    speedfile Tourist

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    My avg baccarat shoes are usually 78-81 hands (not sure how many decks) and it usually takes 90-120 mins to finish a shoe (full table).
     
  15. Bondy3

    Bondy3 High-Roller

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    the blackjack math is a little more complicated because of the nature of the game (doubling, splitting, etc) but once you get to a larger sample size the math breaks down similarly

    a good way to ball-park this information is take the square root of the number of hands you will play, then multiply that by 1.5. this is the amount of units you should bring with you to accommodate for swings, then add onto that number the amount of units you expect to lose from -EV, (1 unit per 65 hands, aprox)

    If you want to do this for a small amount of hands (say 2 shoes, at 72 hands/shoe) then you would take 72+72=144. and then sqrt(144) = 12, and then 12*1.5 = 18, and then you would add 2-3 units, so in order to play 2 shoes of bacc you should bring 20 units to be able to have a 99% chance of making it to the end of the 2nd shoe. We can do the same math for 1 shoe, in this case lets assume 1 shoe = 64 hands resolved, (I know the numbers are changing, im guessing on how many hands are resolved in a shoe and choosing easy numbers to use as examples). you would take sqrt(64)=8, 8*1.5 = 12, and then 12+1 = 13, so you would want to bring 13 units to be able to have a 99% chance of being able to play through 1 shoe of bacc.

    In small sample sizes this doesnt work well, for example for 3 hands of bacc you would take sqrt(3)=1.7*1.5+0.05 = aprox 2, but you would need 3 units to have a 99% chance of surviving 3 hands.

    Also keep in mind I was running the numbers for betting on player because it makes the math simpler, if you switch from banker to player it should be similar but if you make a lot of bets on Dragon and Tie, then the numbers will get pretty far off.

    if you want I can run through the numbers from 1-10 shoes, but I hope with this information you should understand how to find it for any number of Shoes/Hands.

    Also the speed of a Bacc shoe can change drastically based on whos dealing and whos playing, one time I watched a guy on a midi-bac table just spam his $25 banker bet for the whole shoe and the dealer was dealing as fast as possible, went through a shoe in a little over 5 minutes minutes. but ive also seen a shoe take hours
     
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  16. Bondy3

    Bondy3 High-Roller

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    Im sorry I think I mislead when I said hands, when I was saying hands I was referring to hands that are resolved and was not counting ties, I looked into this with a little more depth after looking at what you said and ties happen about 1 in 9, so if your shoe has 81 hands, then 72 of them are resolved on average
     
  17. Gamesman

    Gamesman VIP Whale

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    I've seem some shoes get very lopsided. Some shoes just turn out to be Player shoes and some are Banker shoes.
     
  18. Bondy3

    Bondy3 High-Roller

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    but the question every gambler asks themselves, How do you predict it which side it will lean towards? Sadly the answer is "you can't" :(
     
  19. thefish2010

    thefish2010 Low-Roller

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    BTW if you want to mess around at low limits, the Palazzo still has stadium baccarat. It has a limit from $5 to $50,000. See here.There is also a group of electronic baccarat machines at the MGM with a limit from $5-$3,000 (this is accurate as of New Year's). They are on the wall opposite the David Copperfield theater next to a bar.

    The MGM one goes much faster, but there you get W2G's if you win any bet of $600 or over because it considers the return of your bet part of your win. Your machine locks up and you have to wait for a handpay. Not ideal if you try to play any form of martingale betting system, or if you frequently bet more than $600. Since the Palazzo one is dealt by live dealers, even though you bet on a machine, you never get a W2G even if you bet the $50,000 max and "win" $100,000.
     
  20. Bondy3

    Bondy3 High-Roller

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    Woah that imperial baccarat thing looks cool, I wonder if it will have side bets or if it will just be player vs banker
     
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