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Baccarat Knowledge.  Behavior.  Skill.

It must be classified somewhere within Baccarat gambling.  No matter who you are or when you enter the game, the basics are there for the interpretation and how you will form yourself and what avenue you will go down.  Good, Bad or the Ugly?  It is all up to yourself and yourself alone. 

In my opinion, most baccarat players stumble onto the game or are introduced to it by another acquaintance that stumbled onto it.  Very few have even picked up a book on it or know much about it.  I love to ask a dealer or a floor person and even other players about the history of the game.  It no longer surprises me that almost no one these days even knows that the game was played with the shoe travelling around the table, the players gambling dealing the shoe and the shoe remained with each person as long as they made Banker hands, once a Players hand won, the shoe was past counterclockwise around the table.  There were up to 14 people playing at a table, no back betting, no exchanging money between players, no loaning players money in plain sight, none of that.  It took 5 casino personnel to run each table, 3 dealers and 2 floor people on a constant basis before the game could move.  The dealer racks had $1.5M to $3.0M in them.  Every single game was hand shuffled with 8 new decks every shoe.  Minimum of 20-minute intermissions and a whole other set of morals, standards, dress, politeness and personalities among the players.   There was also mini baccarat where the dealer kept the shoe, dealt and flopped the cards the same as today, on the main floor areas.  But big baccarat, as it was called, was the tables to play.  I guess around from 2002 to 2006 it all started to change, depending on where you were at.  Once the introduction of what we called, Macau style baccarat, the table with the 6 to 10-person design where sometimes the players handle the cards and sometimes the dealers exclusively do, all started o change everything.  That was around 2000 or so. 

I am not a teacher; however, I have done my share of coaching and mentoring (friends and casino tag-alongs, never for a charge) countless times.  Last night I made a few notes.

Knowledge
Behavior
Skill
Values
Preferences

I think all comes into play when deciding on what to wager on in the game of baccarat.  But such skills and knowledge accumulates from repeated experiences, so be careful and that is why I stress playing consciously.  Above all else, remind yourself and even say to yourself, remain conscious, meaning, do not fall into the limelight, the brew haha and the overwhelming crock of stuff at most baccarat tables these days. 

Learning occurs consciously or without conscious awareness as well.  And that is the problem with this game.  You will learn something even when you did not want to or desire to, because money was involved, and you were influenced without even knowing it.  Remember that, it will happen to you, 100%.  And if you say no, you just have not played very long or really looked at the way you do play.

Make $1,000.00 in one minute on one hand or two or lose $10,000.00 in 10 minutes.  I am not talking about millionaires or exclusive Las Vegas high limit rooms, all over the country, all over the world.  The tables are there for a reason, they work.  They work for both the casino property as well as the player playing them.  However, the player playing most of them knows very little about them these days.  And that is sad.  But it is true. Extremely true and extreme reality with influences being more predominant than the most important things of the game.   

In the baccarat game case, you will learn one, two or three ways, be aware:

A player is a learner.  Learns from peers and others.
A player is a learner.  Learns from an instructor, teacher or a school.
A player is a learner.  Learns from content, a casino, experience.

What do you learn or need to learn?  In my opinion, that would be summed up as two things, 1) Understanding Perceptions within the game of baccarat and how they relate to the game and effect your wagering decisions, and 2) Understanding Structures within the game of baccarat and how those effect the game that is put in front of you.  Without understanding those two things, you are taking away huge advantages that would be on your side. 

To me, the learning environment is made up of the physical environment, the size, the configuration and the comfort of the surroundings which all affects a student?s learning possibility.  If to crowded, stress levels rise, attention is reduced, focus gets out of whack or not as keen, restrictions set in and you limit your own ability.  That is just not in baccarat, that is in most everything. 

Learning
Reading
Understanding It  (Truly understanding it, not just what you want to understand)
Developing Curves of Knowledge
Adding Sectional Units of Ideas and Expansions
Arming Yourself With Proper Knowledge to Apply
Sitting There Anyway Taking In What You Should Not Be
Actually, Having The Ability To Sort It Out & Be Tougher, Smarter and More Aware

Or, you can be an unintelligent player, do it the way the casino wants.  Or be smart, do it for profit and yourself.

Be extremely careful of going down the wrong path when entering this game or continuing with it, countless do not.  Once on the wrong path, it is extremely difficult to get back on the correct path.  Strategy is dangerous with the thought and knowledge of wrong beliefs.  The single largest problem seldom recognized by players until they have lost fortunes or the majority of their assets.   

If you were one of the people that were Wowed, Amazed and Thrilled when first hearing about WorldCom or ENRON, be careful of baccarat because you might just get sucked in and lose everything you have or give everything you earn or get your hands on to gamble. 

A quick look at a learning pyramid in the regular world with most subjects and the baccarat learning pyramid.  The normal one, non-baccarat.  Goes like this.  The base is receiving.  Just plain receiving the information.  The middle third section is participating.  Learning by participating a good 25 to 75% of the entire pyramid.  Then topped with learning by doing.  But the baccarat pyramid, in my opinion goes something like this.  The base is doing.  Just plain learning by doing.  The middle third section is participating and topped by receiving.  Kind of the opposite of the normal, proven, safer way of building a real foundation. 

I do not know about you, but I sure do not want my surgeon to learn while he practices on me, I much rather he have a great base and received all his knowledge before cutting on me or my family member.