A.P Heat

In this blog post I covered the basics of advantage play against the Lucky Pairs (LP) baccarat side bet. After looking around a bit, I found that several “live-play” online casinos offer LP. It is easy to use perfect play against live-play online LP.

One of my informal rules for this blog is that I don’t consider ordinary blackjack card counting (BJCC). Any easy Google search reveals myriad resources that give the minutia of every aspect of BJCC. At least three generations of APs have dedicated themselves to this game. For my purposes, the question is: how does BJCC stack up against card counting blackjack side bets?

Lucky Pairs (LP) is one of the names given to the non-proprietary baccarat side bet that simply pays 11-to-1 for a dealt pair. The player can wager on either or both of the Player or Banker side to be dealt a pair. This wager is also available for blackjack (player only), with varying payouts depending on the number of decks used.

One of the great heroes of casino game analysis is Edward O. Thorp. He is best known for his seminal work, Beat the Dealer, originally published in 1962. Over 50 years later, it is still in the top five best-selling books on blackjack listed on Amazon. What is not so well-known is that Thorp also published a research article, with co-author William E. Walden, on beating two baccarat side bets.

I confess, I am at least 20 years older than the oldest “millennial.” I’ve experimented with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but find them too intrusive on my privacy. The social networking I do consists of contributing to a few old-fashioned message boards and keeping a blog.

House of Cards Radio is an interview program hosted by poker and gambling expert Ashley Adams. In the podcast below, I discuss the recent Mississippi Stud hole-carding criminal case that was adjudicated in favor of the players along with several topics about advantage play. My segment starts at about 4'30"

Recently a reader "Rob" wrote an extended comment to this post explaining his opinion that casinos are "the enemy." Rob made some points that are core to many AP's defense of their "enemy/evil" maxim towards casinos.  I am going to take this opportunity to respond to Rob's arguments, as well as the "casinos are the enemy" doctrine, directly in this post.

You (Rob) wrote:

The “Easy Six” (ES) baccarat side bet pays 6-to-1 if either the Player hand or Banker hand wins on six points, or if a tie occurs on six points.  Otherwise, the ES wager loses.

I first considered if the Dragon 7 baccarat side bet was susceptible to a card counting methodology in mid-2011 when it was exclusively a proprietary side bet owned by DEQ that was associated with the commission free baccarat variant EZ Baccarat.

The saga of the 14 gamblers who won $1.5 million from the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City by exploiting un-shuffled cards in mini-baccarat continued this week. In case you missed the story, in April, 2012, these 14 players (the “Atlantic City 14″) noticed that the cards being used on a mini-baccarat table were un-shuffled. As a consequence, they won 41 straight hands.