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[21 Aces]

alrelax, Thank you for sharing this and other great insight to the game:

Baccarat Reality. H-Money loses $12K +. Proper Bankroll-Buy In & Frame-of-Mind
https://betselection.cc/baccarat-forum/baccarat-reality-h-money-loses-$12k-proper-bankroll-buy-in-frame-of-mind/


I will leave this open ended for you to comment on if you would like.

Players that are serious about baccarat want to get better is all aspects, but what are the best ways to prepare and train in your view?
- Play baccarat on-line which can be by yourself or others.
- Play with live cards by yourself or with others away from the real tables.
- Practice at a real house with no money or with very minimal size units.
- Other.

From your thread I see more and more it is the outside world pressure and a tendency for players to drift in their view of how good they are that are two of the top factors that can cause trouble.  That is, wrecked outside the house makes it very difficult to play successfully, and just like they speak of in poker, players who have experience tend to think their capabilities are much higher until they really do get sharp.


Thanks.

[21 Aces]

Regarding on-line baccarat games, you really have to have multiple players in communication real time to test and verify that the outcomes are not being rigged in some way.  That is, a game can always select a play based on your bet to make it look like you are better than you are/ other variations, etc.

Regarding live card play away from the house, although it could be done in a live casino, I am very surprised there are not baccarat clubs where people get together to practice.  Real set up or close to it and sky is the limit on that.  Seems like a good approach to improve.

Maybe most players believe the only way to get better is through live play.


I don't believe this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF7SU7tDUzQ

[alrelax]

Regarding live card play away from the house, although it could be done in a live casino, I am very surprised there are not baccarat clubs where people get together to practice.  Real set up or close to it and sky is the limit on that.  Seems like a good approach to improve.

Every player I personally know when I lived in NYC/NJ metro area from the late 80's to 2002, that frequented Atlantic City, Connecticut and as well, Vegas/Southern California, baccarat tables--all had their own businesses or worked for someone.  Not a single one was a 'professional-full time bac player' in the classical sense of the term--meaning they made their living entirely from gambling.  The highest majority was restaurant owners, car dealership/auto related business owners, nail shop/salon business owners/bar-club owners--after hour hours and brothel owner--or something on Wall street or the financial markets.  Also people that worked in those fields.  Those were the high limit rooms.  Then there was the main floor tables where most were employees of the restaurant or bar business, nail shop-salon businesses as well as some form of worker from the after hours clubs and the massage parlor businesses of course. 

Then there was your larger Asian communities were the larger restaurants in the metro areas, the employees would pool their weekly salaries together and appoint one person to play and 1 or 2 other people to witness what they do.  They would play both the high limit rooms and the main floors.

After 9/11 about the time the midi/Macau table started to replace all the big tables, etc., more and more players started playing from all walks of life, I guess is the way to put it. 

These days, out of all the people I talk to and all the places I go, very few play full time still.  There are a few that have no job that do hang at the casinos and play constantly, but not big and are into loan sharks and pawn for most of their assets.  They play with so much pressure and desperation, they can never see daylight or profit, simple. 

Sure, there might be some that are successful and live life good off the casino, I just don't know any and I would not subscribe to that lifestyle or count on it, because  I have 3 kids I provide for and a good relationship in a business that provides me numerous benefits, a 6 figure salary/bonus agreement, etc. 

I literally know hundreds of players.  I have a couple people in my immediate family that are 20 year plus casino hosts or upper casino management of the larger properties in larger gaming jurisdictions.  My daughter from my first marriage was almost 15 years at one of the largest casino properties on the east coast in a position of corporate management and recently relocated to a senior vice president position with a major casino industry company in Las Vegas and is engaged to marry one of the Senior Vice President's of one of the most respected properties on the strip.  I know a lot more about the actual industry than many might think, especially those on other boards that are teaching guaranteed 80-90% win holds, or other wild-off the cuff mechanical betting systems, or soliciting readers to join elite membership clubs for a monthly fee because  some pirate claims to be the granddaddy wizard of the most professional-elite-multi million dollar baccarat winners anywhere.  The story will never end, it just gets funny and more twisted with their outlandish, non reality and twisted truth with huge helping of toppings called, Wishes, Desires, Fallacy, and Dreams, they way me and you put Oregano, Basil, Cilantro, Olive Oil and Parmesan on our food.  No darn different....................... 

As far as practice and getting together, everyone I know barely has time for everything they do in life--let alone getting together to practice cards. 

The serious people IMO know how to play and are all kind of experts.  They just lose it as I have detailed out numerous times with their vision--psych and pressure they have no a that they even have.  Sad, but true. 

I seriously think it takes a good 10 years for the average intelligent person to learn the other things they must realize and understand besides the game itself, to make money and have the vision to profit and hold their profits.  It took me over 15 years because  I am not as intelligent, a bit more hard headed than everyone and extremely egotistic that I knew everything there was to know about gambling.  But to come in, read the internet, invest your funds and assets and be a full time gambler getting wealthy--you stand a better shot at writing a movie like the new Peter Rabbit or the Black Panther and selling it for millions to retire and buy your own private island and have a mansion built on it.  All IMO and experience, of course.

[21 Aces]

Thank you.   I see limited time for preparing and training as a huge issue for many.

I'm going to take active steps for my own situation to change that.   I want to reside much closer to my house so that a 90 minute window becomes around 70 minutes of house time if I want.   This offers more opportunity to be in the house to train and by extension more opportunity to play without timing due to travel issues.  A 3 hour window is going to be 2 hours and 40 minutes, and actually going rather than 2 hours and a no go.

Wrong time of day around here buys a 1 hour ++ parking lot which is under 30 minutes at less opportune times.

[alrelax]

Typo from the above post I made earlier today....

"The serious people IMO know how to play and are all kind of experts.  They just lose it as I have detailed out numerous times with their vision--psych and pressure they have no a that they even have.  Sad, but true."



Should read:

....they have no idea or knowledge about these, that they should have.

[21 Aces]

Best advice and for some being discussed here is that they should go to zero live play or some big ratio of training hours to live play like 10 hours to 1 hour.  You can acquire a whole set up for yourself including cards, chips, a baccarat shoe, and set up a space to practice.  There are multiple free apps that can generate scoring just like the house offers.

It also pays to go practice at a real house with no money or with very minimal size units.  You can learn a lot by this and observing the general environment.

...
- Play baccarat on-line which can be by yourself or others.
- Play with live cards by yourself or with others away from the real tables.
- Practice at a real house with no money or with very minimal size units.
- Other.

[JoeyKnish]

If you can simulate real playing conditions or close to it you will have a much better chance in winning long term and consistently. You need a computer program/website with an "actual" deck of cards and real casino chips to practice. You need actual chips so you can see what happens in how you would react if you are winning and losing. You practice long enough you will see how you how much you will win most of the time and how you will lose. Once you discover all that and things become automatic where you can see four to five steps ahead you will do fine.

[8OR9]

You can buy a cheap battery powered shuffle machine on line ( I think mine cost about $ 35 and uses          "C" batteries )......and you can get Walmart cards for a dollar a deck. 

An automatic shufflemaster or deckmate can run many thousands of dollars......and I'm not sure they will sell to the public.......you may have to go on Ebay to get a cheap one, and hope you don't get ripped off.

[Jimske]

I studied and practiced Bacc nearly every evening for several years before ever laying a dollar down.  Reason is I knew nothing - just put together stats and listened to others teaching - mostly ECD stuff.  Got to hand it to ECD he really put out a lot of stuff. He gave a LOT of perspectives to the game.  The guys at BTC still use his stuff with a lot of adjustments AND do a lot of practice.  I'm not involved with them.  I got no doubt that there is some that win consistently doing what they're doing.

Prior to my recent 10 month "vacation." I had over 50% win rate for thousands of decisions.  But still practiced, studied and played various ways.  There's not one way to win.  A lot of it has to do with temperament, time available and economic considerations as well as personal objectives.

Reality?  Glen is right.  A long way of saying that just like in other aspects of life we need discipline, good management of time and money including alertness and last but not least a WELL THOUGHT OUT PLAN.  But plans need practice, right?

My best advice is to share what once was told me many years ago that I always ask myself every time I play, "Do you want to win or do you want to play a game?"  Can't do both.  After that know what every aspect of the plan is and develop a habit and mechanism to maintain.  Am I perfect at it?  Nope.

J

[Ted009]

I studied and practiced Bacc nearly every evening for several years before ever laying a dollar down.  Reason is I knew nothing - just put together stats and listened to others teaching - mostly ECD stuff.  Got to hand it to ECD he really put out a lot of stuff. He gave a LOT of perspectives to the game.  The guys at BTC still use his stuff with a lot of adjustments AND do a lot of practice.  I'm not involved with them.  I got no doubt that there is some that win consistently doing what they're doing.

Prior to my recent 10 month "vacation." I had over 50% win rate for thousands of decisions.  But still practiced, studied and played various ways.  There's not one way to win.  A lot of it has to do with temperament, time available and economic considerations as well as personal objectives.

Reality?  Glen is right.  A long way of saying that just like in other aspects of life we need discipline, good management of time and money including alertness and last but not least a WELL THOUGHT OUT PLAN.  But plans need practice, right?

My best advice is to share what once was told me many years ago that I always ask myself every time I play, "Do you want to win or do you want to play a game?"  Can't do both.  After that know what every aspect of the plan is and develop a habit and mechanism to maintain.  Am I perfect at it?  Nope.

J

Excellent advice!!

Cheers!

[alrelax]

I studied and practiced Bacc nearly every evening for several years before ever laying a dollar down.  Reason is I knew nothing - just put together stats and listened to others teaching - mostly ECD stuff.  Got to hand it to ECD he really put out a lot of stuff. He gave a LOT of perspectives to the game.  The guys at BTC still use his stuff with a lot of adjustments AND do a lot of practice.  I'm not involved with them.  I got no doubt that there is some that win consistently doing what they're doing.

Prior to my recent 10 month "vacation." I had over 50% win rate for thousands of decisions.  But still practiced, studied and played various ways.  There's not one way to win.  A lot of it has to do with temperament, time available and economic considerations as well as personal objectives.

Reality?  Glen is right.  A long way of saying that just like in other aspects of life we need discipline, good management of time and money including alertness and last but not least a WELL THOUGHT OUT PLAN.  But plans need practice, right?

My best advice is to share what once was told me many years ago that I always ask myself every time I play, "Do you want to win or do you want to play a game?"  Can't do both.  After that know what every aspect of the plan is and develop a habit and mechanism to maintain.  Am I perfect at it?  Nope.

J

Yes, as Ted just said, excellent.  Anything is possible in baccarat.  IMO, it all hinges on the player of course  .It is NOT rocket science and you do not need a PHD in statistical analysis by any means.  It is staying in conscious reality, knowing the game, not getting sucked in, having experienced losses and a few other things.  I have written in detail about all of these.  There is a huge separating difference between playing the game and winning, huge!  Be careful, you can certainly enjoy the game, as anyone can do even in back breaking jobs and all careers, it is in the frame-of-mind and the interpretation of what you are doing.  The problem is, without experience (even having trained and knowing the game) that rack of chips sitting in front of you and your mind--(that not enough people talk about or recognize to be a problem playing the game) will get you almost every time you win.  Not you lack of knowledge.

I have witnessed countless times players winning money and their frame-of-mind totally does a 180 and disaster sets in.  I have seen it, witnessed it, experienced it and it had affected every single person I know playing the game today.  Some are conscious of it, deal with it and win and yet the highest majority of the others, it attacks like a swarm of killer bees and stings them each and every time they play.

A very good friend I have written about the past few weeks, lost over $70,000.00 of his hard-earned 'blood sweat and tears' lifetime savings fund and he has only a little bit left before he is totally broke.  I thought he was getting under control and it only became worse.  And the sad part of it, he is a pretty good player in the actual wagering of betselection and wagering reasoning, etc.  He probably will lose it all, sad but reality to the max!

Something I wrote that may be of interest to some:  https://betselection.cc/alrelax's-blog/reality-of-winning-losing-and-reality-itself-my-aspect/

[Jimske]

I think that people who gamble on a regular basis tend to be predisposed to compulsive and/or addictive behavior.  But for those who don't need or think they don't need GA there are mechanisms that one could use to prevent "tilting."  Without listing numerous obvious examples I'll just say develop specific , definite RULES.  Test your discipline by following those rules and don't make excuses.  If you can't follow your own rules you got a discipline problem.  Everyone slips - I slip on occasion.  Recognizing the slip can put you back on track.

Practice.  If you don't need the tote board then it's pretty easy to practice at home with a scorecard and any game that kicks out decisions.  Or use real shoes and figure a way to not see the next decision.

There are folks here who have at least intimated that they have predictive method(s) which give them a positive expectation.  Personally, I don't buy it but if that is the case then discipline is not an issue.  Just wait for the fly to land and swat it!  Card counting BJ is like that - almost.  Mistakes, fatigue, banning, preferential shuffle and table conditions make BJ a near impossible game to profit from.

People I know of have a "benchmark" of some sort.  A fixed mechanical way of playing from which they deviate based on particulars (trend, bias, pattern, etc.) occurring in the game.  Others will play a strict rule based process.  But either way the winning formula IMO, is betting and MM.  I think this is true even for those who "think" they can predict future outcome. 

Pick your method and practice so you know what when and how you're going to accomplish the objective.  Be consistent.

J

[Gizmotron]

There are folks here who have at least intimated that they have predictive method(s) which give them a positive expectation.  Personally, I don't buy it but if that is the case then discipline is not an issue. 

There are people that claim they have predictive capabilities based on trends. That's been around for a very long time too. It's called Gambler's Fallacy.


Nobody can predict future spin outcomes in Roulette based only on recent past spin data. There was a time when wheels were defective or out of balance, where dividers between number slots were loosened by age and use. Those were real detectable advantages if you figured out where they were. But I'm talking about just random based trends and patterns and such. Nobody can predict the future based on the past spins. Now does that mean that you can't use past spins to have an advantage? I have argued for years that you can still have a strategic method based on the appearance of a continuing trend or pattern. A trend or pattern has a start, a middle, and an ending. You can't know when one will start. You can know when you are in the middle. You can't know when it will end. Not even the smartest math professor knows when they start and end.


You can take that knowable middle of a trend and speculate on it. Now that does not mean that you have acquired a gift of knowing when the end comes. It does one thing for you though. You can't guess on a trend to start on the next spin as with the same degree of accuracy as betting for an existing trend to continue. Now mathematically each spin is independent of each other. So you can have the same odds as a blind guess. But I do something that is unusual. I speculate on getting in on the long shot. A long shot is a sleeping dozen or a continuous streak of singles that tend to last from 10 to 16 or more spins. You won't get lucky very often when you try from a blind, non occurring position, to be at the very start of a long shot streak if you have not already seen the beginning signs before hand.


I have always said that you need to be aware of the playing conditions. That does not mean the observance of trends or patterns as the bases for your MM. You need to be aware of the effectiveness in the current session that you are participating in. There can be three primary states or conditions that are real information to you. Your guesses can be real good and you are in a win streak. They can be moderate and you are breaking even after all that effort. They can be real bad and you are getting killed in your bankroll. You must know that betting on trends or patterns is nothing more than speculation based on guessing. You must play the effectiveness game in order to make gambling a success. Most people that know this devise money management methods that adapt to the conditions. I'm not suggesting progressions either. Why would anyone use a negative progression if they were in a known bad streak?


Like I said for years. It's just educated guessing. It's based on reading randomness. It is never a claim of prediction. I know that a person can know when they are in the middle of a trend or pattern and that they can know if those guesses are trending as a win streak. It's not prediction. It's a skilled awareness. So discipline is a requirement to succeed.

[Jimske]

I won't persue this too much longer.  Maybe it's just a matter of semantics but to my way of thinking there's only three elements.

Historical data - whether we call them sleepers, patterns, trends; whether they are in the middle end or  . . . we need this to develop the next element which is  . . .

Identification - looking at historical data and speculating that some future outcome may happen; call it guessing, educated guessing, whatever but this certain condition(s) we see often and can say what that condition(s) is.

Prediction - because now we are making a bet that above certain historical data has been identified and we make a bet knowing that it will have a positive outcome.

Any other is just a feeling or, well, a guess.  Maybe some are better guessers than others.  Maybe it's not just a guess but an unexplicable "6th sense."

[Gizmotron]

I won't persue this too much longer.  Maybe it's just a matter of semantics but to my way of thinking there's only three elements.

Historical data - whether we call them sleepers, patterns, trends; whether they are in the middle end or  . . . we need this to develop the next element which is  . . .

Identification - looking at historical data and speculating that some future outcome may happen; call it guessing, educated guessing, whatever but this certain condition(s) we see often and can say what that condition(s) is.

Prediction - because now we are making a bet that above certain historical data has been identified and we make a bet knowing that it will have a positive outcome.

Any other is just a feeling or, well, a guess.  Maybe some are better guessers than others.  Maybe it's not just a guess but an unexplicable "6th sense."

I won't either.