Baccarat Classic Review & Free Play

Baccarat Classic: Pick a Side and Let the Cards Draw Themselves

BP Games keeps its Baccarat Classic faithful to that, dealt from several standard 52-card decks, where your one job is to back the Player hand, the Banker hand, or the Tie before a card turns.

Despite the name, you don't play as the Player, it's simply one of the two hands you can bet on, alongside the Banker. Banker bets pay 0.95x, the Player pays even money at 1x, a Tie returns 8x, a matched first pair on either hand pays 11x, and a Banker six tops out at 12x.

Although the scoring looks unfamiliar at first, cards from two to nine keep their face value, aces count as one, and tens and face cards count as zero. Only the last digit of the total matters, so a hand worth 16 becomes six, and the score never goes above nine. The game also handles every third-card draw according to the standard Baccarat rules, leaving the hand closest to nine as the winner.

I spent most of my session on the Banker, since it carries the lowest house edge on the table by a clear margin. The catch is the five percent commission clipped off every Banker win, which is why it pays 0.95x rather than a full 1x. Even so, seven Banker wins across my first eleven hands put me 2.65x my bet ahead before I had properly settled in.

Temptation came dressed as the Tie and its 8x, so I threw a bet at it twice before remembering why the smart money leaves it alone. Both hands missed by a point, costing me 2x, though a matched pair of eights in the Banker box soon paid the Banker Pair at 11x, my biggest hit of the night. I cashed out 11.65x my bet up, nearly all of it off the Banker rather than the bets that pay bigger.

Overall, the Banker is about as good a bet as you will find on a casino floor, and the pair and Banker six side bets give you something to chase between hands. What you give up is drama, since the game makes every draw for you and only asks you to pick a side and wait.