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[AsymBacGuy]

Chemin de fer ("railroad" in french) is a form of baccarat where the house isn't directly involved as the 9 people seated at the table play among themselves.
House only controls the game, taking the 5% vig on every Banker wins.

Almost exclusively spread in Europe, the game is played with 6 decks.

I'll try to explain the rules for the few who don't know this bac variant. 

The player seated on #1 begins the action "owning" the shoe, meaning that he's the Banker and every other player at the table could only oppose his initial bet so wagering the Player side (the minimum bet generally is quite high, there is no maximum). It's not mandatory that one or more players have to cover all his initial or subsequent bets, whenever the Player side won't cover the Banker bet the uncovered amount will be given back to the Banker man.
Anyway, the man impersoning the Banker must leave the entire amount (generally a doubled sum per each hand won) as long as he keep winning his Banker hands. He cannot pass his first turn to be the Banker but after any win he has the option to pass the shoe to another player (so enticing a sort of auction among the players with a left to right priority).
Generally almost nobody will pass the shoe (so abandoning the right to be the banker) after just one winning hand, very rarely after two winning hands, mostly after 3 or 4 hands. Some players love to keep the shoe until the winning streak comes to an end.

Everytime the banker hand loses the shoe passes to the player seated in the immediate left who will be the new Banker and so on, the shoe going around the table in a clockwise fashion. If the shoe was "bought" by another player after a Banker winning streak,  the game continues until the B streak will be over and then the game resumes to the next player.
Therefore in turn every player will have the right to be the Banker as long as he will be able to win his Banker hands.

Differently to the baccarat version played in the casinos, here players betting the Player side don't show their two hole cards unless they form a natural point. However Banker player must show his cards.   
If a Player bettor is taking the action alone, he can do whatever he wants, so standing with 4 or 5, hitting with 6, denying a natural by simple standing and not showing the natural (this last option is denied to the banker for obvious reasons). Otherwise, he must stay to the rule of showing naturals, standing with 6 or 7, drawing with 0,1,2,3,4,  but he still has the option to stand on 5. 
The Banker player could decide what to do after the third card draw (even drawing with a 6 or even standing with a 5 vs a stand, a no brainer move), the third card more significant scenarios being when he has 5 giving a 4 and having a 3 giving a 9 (both stand or draw decisions have the same mathematical expectancy).
Moreover the Banker man showing a natural when the Player asks for a third card has the option to give this card, a move solely based on superstition (of course risking to tie the hand as it's almost always used with a B9 hand).

Example.

Player #1 holds the shoe so he's the Banker, if Player side wins the hand the shoe passes to the next player seated to his left, player #2. If player #1 wins the hand he must leave the doubled amount for the next hand and so on until he lose or he decides to take rid of the shoe.

Comments

We can easily see that being forced any player to be the Banker, the main aim is hoping to get streaks of Banker wins right on the seat assigned to a given player. A secondary option is to bet the Player side but for the clockwise nature of the game there are no guarantees that any player can effectively bet whenever he decides to, unless the banker win is so huge that he's the only one who might afford the sum to cover it. Definitely chemin de fer is a high stakes game and surely a pure luck game.

Curious statistical features

Not surprisingly and from a Banker point of view, most part of shoes will award just a couple or three players among the nine seated, so at least 2/3 of the total players will be sure losers.
And this thing tends to perpetrate even for some series of shoes.

In a word, for every player the hope to get one or more substantial winning streaks on Banker side right on his turn will be somewhat misplaced.

Many times one or more given seats won't be able to win a single hand, everytime coming up a Player hand on their Banker turn.

Of course the opposite scenario, meaning that the same few seats are regularly kissed by luck, are quite frequent.

It seems that the RTM effect doesn't act at all at Chemin de Fer, at least considering a single session. Of course it's just a mathematical distribution issue.

Some players adopting a kind of "other people luck" strategy would find a heaven on those games.


Possible applications of such features on real baccarat

Of course I'm writing this stuff just for curiosity purposes, but if you test some shoes you'll get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

Let's say we want to transform a Chemin de Fer game into a baccarat table.

The initial shoe is: BP P BBP BP BBBBBP BBP  P BBBP P.
players                  1  2   3    4       5       6    7    8    9

So player #1 will win the first hand (B) the he proceeds to lose the next (P) so the shoe passes to player #2 that  lose the first hand being another P.
Player #3 wins two hands in a row (BB) then he loses so the shoe passes to player #4.
This wins just one hand the he loses.
Player #5 wins 5 hands in a row, then Player #6 wins two hands in a row then loses.
Player #7 lose his very first hand, then player #8 wins 3 hands in a row. Players #9 lose his first hand.

In this 14:9 B/P ratio we registered 3 players not getting just one winning hand, two players winning one hand, two players winning two hands, one player winning three hands and only one lucky player winning five hands.
From a strict chemin de fer point of view and generally speaking, it's very probable that after this first cycle only player #8 and #5 could have gotten some profit, admitting that player 8 wanted to abandon the shoe after 3 winning hands and that player #5 didn't want to press his luck if all or almost all of his temporary winning amount were covered by the other players at the table.

After the second cycle we could get a better idea about the "luck" of any player, also considering the nature of the first sequence of hands, voluntarily shifted toward the B side.

It's true that some shoes will provide strong dominances on B side so enhancing the probability that many players will be winning in some way, nonetheless itlr it should be interesting to assess the "lucky-unlucky" lines of each player, especially knowing that after any CdF session there are at least 4 or 5 players heavily losing.

Just for curiosity. Of course.

as. 

 

   



   









 













     







   








 






 

 




   



 

[21 Aces]

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xDj3NRYTU8

[Garfield]

I think this is an advance level of this game. I wouldn't dare to play that. Imagine when you are a mandatory banker and it was a player streak. Then everyone bet big time. You can be wiped out in one single hand.

Anyway thanks for sharing.

[mahatma]

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xDj3NRYTU8

No score boards, sitting out hands, even writing down hands baloney playing this version of the game.  There was however a lot of casino skulduggery by use of shills..   

[soxfan]

Counting card would have value at the chemin de fer, hey hey.

[AsymBacGuy]

Thanks for the replies.

Actually Chemin de Fer tables are great money producers for casinos.
When the player is acting as banker, houses withdraw 5% on every winning bet, not paying anything on the opposed side so the game is always unbalanced on their way, a perfect freeroll.
Moreover both the double or leave the shoe rule along with the high minimum bets make incredible profits, not forgetting that the 5% taxed side is more likely than the other one.

There are only two employees simultaneously working at a CdF table: the dealer and the "change" man as the sums everytime must be decurted by 5% on winning B bets. There are no pit bosses or floormen supervising the game, the dealer makes the job. 

Let's see how much the house collects after a "simple" three winning B sequence with a $1000 minimum bet (usually house rounds the vig percentages):

$50, $95, $195 = $340.

The winning player will collect $3705 as any next winning hand reduces the total amount at stake.

Admitting the player will pass the shoe, and even discounting the almost mandatory tip to the dealer (generally at least $100 in this instance) we easily understand why CdF players will go broke a lot faster than the baccarat players counterpart.

From a statistical point of view, there are endless considerations to be made.

First, theorically a player could bet the Player side just one time, namely when he's seated to the immediate left of the shoe; a player losing the previous hand whether he was the only one to bet the whole sum will have the right to rebet Player buy only if he covers the new entire sum (it's called "suivi"). Obviously this rule will tend to have players chasing their losses in double forms.

Second, the only hope to win on banker is hoping that after a P a decent B winning streaks will come out right on the first hand where a given player is seated.
We notice that from an empirical and trend point of view, it would be better to be the banker after a BBBBP sequence than after a PPPPBPPPBP pattern.

Third, the almost mandatory rule to leave the total winning sum on the same B side doesn't make much sense.
Banker is more likely than Player, but this raised probability is spread by the old well known 8.4% average percentage. It means that just one time over nearly 12 attempts Banker will be more likely than Player.

Fourth, the average 2-3 winning peaks observed are disproportionally placed as they are considered into a well specific "system", that is more often than not denying a possible RTM effect on short terms (one, two or even 5 shoes played).

If I had to explain why my methods suggest to bet very few hands on some selected spots, the CdF example will be in first place.

as. 






     










 

 

[AsymBacGuy]

Counting card would have value at the chemin de fer, hey hey.

Very good point.

Whenever a player is getting a point 5 on P side, knowing that many low cards had come out should entice the standing action and viceversa.

as.