While baccarat is often portrayed as a high-class casino game featured in James Bond movies, it’s actually one of the easiest games to play at real money casinos. It’s slow-paced, requires little skill, and maintains a low house edge. Moreover, it features an array of betting strategies that can help players maximize their profits. These betting systems can range from a simple track sheet to a complex grid that records the frequency of wins for player, banker, and tie bets.

Baccarat is played with eight decks of cards dealt from a dealing shoe. Each card has a numerical value, with 10 and picture cards worth 0 points, numbered cards worth their face value, and aces worth 1 point. When adding up a hand’s total, the player subtracts 10 or drops the first numeral to arrive at the final score. The banker’s total is added without adding the ten, and the dealer also follows this rule.

Many baccarat strategies focus on eliminating the player and banker bets to minimize losses, and the Tie bet, which has a 14.1% house edge, is often ignored. Nevertheless, there are other tactics that can reduce the house advantage even further. For example, a common strategy is to use the 1-3-2-6 system, which divides a player’s bankroll into units of one-to-three-to-six. This helps players avoid big bets during losing streaks and stretch their winning streaks. In addition, the 1-3-2-4 strategy is a reinvention of this technique that reduces the final bet by two units, further cutting the banker’s edge.