Baccarat is a game of chance. There is no skill involved in the game, which consists of betting on whether or not your hand or the dealer’s hand will add up to 8 or 9. Players’ strategy generally consists of betting on streaks, but given that each hand is an independent event the streaks are purely random chance.
So how did one of the best poker players in the world take a casino for $12 million dollars? Remember that it is not up for debate that baccarat is purely a game of chance and the house retains an edge.
Perhaps only by a stroke of chance, while poker legend Phil Ivey was playing baccarat in a storied London casino, Crockfords in Mayfair he noticed that there was a flaw in the deck of cards the casino was using. The flaw in printing and cutting the deck allowed him to tell one edge of the card from another. Returning the next night and playing up his belief in superstition by asking the casino to play the same dealer, with the same cards, and with his same lucky hat Ivey and his compatriot asked the dealer to turn the 7s, 8s, and 9s (the best cards) 180 degrees before returning them to the shoe. In this way, Ivey could see when they were going to be dealt and use this edge, no pun intended, to beat the house. The casino couldn’t imagine why this would matter, so they agreed.
When I heard this story I found it fascinating. Not because it’s a way of beating the house – that ship has sailed and Ivey is suing Crockfords because they won’t pay out his winnings – but because of the sensitivity to the cards required to pull this off.
Think of it this way: Even if I told you what to look for, that the razor-thin edge of some cards would have a slightly different pattern than others it would still take a serious effort for you to be able to perceive that difference and play on it. And even then you would have to do it nonchalantly without looking like you’re inspecting the shoe for differences in the cards. Only someone who has spent the better portion of his life in card rooms could pull this off.
Ivey was in the enviable position of preparation meeting opportunity, or luck as Seneca called it.
This sensitivity, or this eye, can only be developed over tens of thousands of hours. It’s the exact same thing that amazes people the first time their trainer says, “What’s going on with your right hip? You’re walking differently.” Great trainers have developed this eye for movement that can’t be taught – it has to be practiced.
You and I are never going to beat baccarat by edge sorting. But, there is something you’ve been doing for a long time that you do have the eye or the sensitivity to. You know it intimately and you can take advantage of an opportunity or an edge when it’s presented to you.
What is it? Will you know the opportunity when you see it?
And for god’s sake, if there isn’t something you’ve got the sensitive eye for you’ve got work to do.
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