.............and this is not the Peter Griffin from Family Guy!?!?!

Quote from: Bayes on June 16, 2013, 05:31:40 PM
It's a fair point, but the fact that "true" baccarat uses a finite amount of cards would only have practical significance if it were possible to get an edge through counting them (perhaps in the latter half of the shoe), but to my knowledge no such advantage is possible.

I agree.  Card counting is not a viable play in baccarat.

Quote from: Bayes on June 16, 2013, 05:31:40 PMReplacing cards may result in something other than the game of baccarat, but since (according to the experts) not replacing cards doesn't make any difference insofar as potential profits are concerned (unlike Blackjack) then it has to asked, where is the harm?

The "harm" is that you're no longer playing baccarat!  Introducing what amounts to a whole new shoe after each hand is simply not the way to play the game.  That in itself is reason to avoid this particular iteration of the game.

Although card counting is apparently ineffective in baccarat, there is a large subset of players who do believe that the shoe is basically "cast in stone" once the first card is drawn and they can determine, with some degree of success, if there is any type of bias showing up.   If their assumptions are correct, they then have a real advantage (or perceived advantage) that they can play the shoe "correctly" and pull a win out of it.

AD

In my first trip, I entered a small casino having airball roulette both automated which runs at every minute and touchscreen betting and one having a table to place chips, a croupier to pay you wining or buy ins or to say, "next bet" or "no more bets". Croupier used to press a button over a roulette wheel having a wheel similar to automated one. I did not like that way too but soon I understood that it has no difference. I won good too, in the very first day.
              When I felt like playing baccarat, I saw again a machine with no real cards. It was kind of software. I tried a few hands, it looked random to me too but again my mind did not allow me to play there. Automated roulette had no trouble, indeed I prefer that. It is like having a private table to place bets where no one is caring about what you are are doing. software baccarat looks indigestible to me although if I think rationally, unless they cheat, they are all same. Continuous shuffle is only meant to make game more unpredictable.

I certainly wouldn't knock the psychological aspect of play, and if you're convinced that Baccarat is superior to say, roulette because the outcomes are fixed in advance, then you're probably not going to be persuaded otherwise. So although strictly speaking, Bacc isn't a game of independent trials, it certainly behaves as though it is. The fact that outcomes are set in stone doesn't really give you any more clues as to the composition of the shoe than the case when cards are shuffled back into the shoe after every hand.