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Baccarat

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Baccarat

Baccarat or baccara (/ˈbækəræt, bɑːkəˈrɑː/; French: [bakaʁa]) is a card game. It is now played mainly at casinos, but in the past it was also popular at house parties and private gaming rooms. The game's origins are a mixture of precursors from China, Japan, and Korea. It then gained popularity in Europe, and a faster French variant emerged. Today the most common version derives from Cuba.

Baccarat is a comparing card game played between two hands, the "player" and the "banker". Each baccarat coup (round of play) has three possible outcomes: "player" (player has the higher score), "banker", and "tie".

There are three popular variants of the game: punto banco, baccarat chemin de fer, and baccarat banque (or à deux tableaux). In punto banco, each player's moves are forced by the cards the player is dealt. In baccarat chemin de fer and baccarat banque, by contrast, both players can make choices. The winning odds are in favour of the bank, with a house edge of at least 1 percent.

The origins of the game are disputed. Some sources claim that it dates to the 19th century, others that the game was introduced into France from Italy at the end of the 15th century by soldiers returning from the Italian Wars during the reign of King of France Charles VIII.

David Parlett considers Macao the immediate precursor to baccarat. Its name and rules suggest it may have been brought over by sailors returning from Asia where similar card games have been played since the early 17th century such as San zhang, Oicho-Kabu, and Gabo japgi. Macao appeared in Europe at the end of the 18th century and was popular for all classes. Its notoriety led to King Victor-Amadeus III banning it in all his realms in 1788. It was the most popular game in Watier's, an exclusive gentlemen's club in London, where it led to the ruin of Beau Brummell. It was declared illegal late in the 19th century, as a gambling game of almost pure chance; however it remained wildly popular in high society, aficionados including the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII), who was compelled to testify in court following the Royal baccarat scandal of 1890, in which a player was accused of cheating during games held at Tranby Croft in Yorkshire, England. The match in Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Night Games (Spiel im Morgengrauen) contains instructions for Macao under the name of baccarat. Its popularity in the United States waned after the early 20th century. The game still has a following in Continental Europe, especially in Russia. Like Macao and Victoria, baccarat was banned in Russia during the 19th century though the rules continued to be printed in game books.

Baccarat has been popular among the French nobility since the 19th century. Before the legalization of casino gambling in 1907, people in France commonly played baccarat in private gaming rooms. Dating to this time period, Baccarat Banque is the earliest form of baccarat; it is a three-person game and mentioned in Album des jeux by Charles Van-Tenac. Later, Chemin de Fer emerged as a two-player zero-sum game from Baccarat Banque. Chemin de Fer is a version which first appeared in the late 19th century. Its name, which is the French term for "railway", comes from the version being quicker than the original game, the railway being at that time the fastest means of transport. This version of baccarat remains the most popular in France.

Baccarat Punto Banco, in which the bettor bets on whether the Player or the Banker hand wins, was a significant change in the development of modern baccarat. It developed into a house-banked game in Havana in the 1940s, and is now the most popular modern form in most parts of the world.

In baccarat, the 2 through 9 cards (of any suit) are worth face value (in points); the 10, jack, queen, and king are worth zero; aces are worth one point; jokers are not used. The value of the hand is the units digit of the sum of the constituent cards, known as modulo ten arithmetic. For example, a hand consisting of 2 and 3 is worth five, while a hand consisting of 6 and 7 is worth three, that being the value of the units digit in the combined point total of thirteen. The highest possible hand value in baccarat is therefore nine.

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