Eliot Jacobson Ph.D.

At the table games conference last week, there was an ironic incident that I would like to share with you. It occurred during one of the premier panel discussions: "What You Can Learn from Table Game Players Who Are Smarter than All of Us," on Tuesday, November 19, 2013.

The Dragon side bet and Panda side bet for EZ Baccarat have known card counting issues. Recently I received an e-mail from an employee in surveillance at a major casino asking if this was still the case, or if I had retracted my work. I discussed this surprising e-mail in this post.

When an AP finds a dealer on Ultimate Texas Hold'em (UTH) who is vulnerable to hole-carding, it is not unusual for her to expose the bottom card of every packet of cards she delivers. This includes exposing one of her two hole-cards as well as one of the common cards.

I originally posted my analysis of the Dragon side bet for EZ Baccarat in this post on the Wizard of Odds website. Shortly after, Michael Shackleford made this post, describing a card counting method to beat the Panda side bet for EZ Baccarat.

In this blog post I covered the basics of advantage play against the Lucky Pairs (LP) baccarat side bet. In the most common variation of LP, the player can wager that either the next Player or Banker hand will be a pair. A winning wager pays 11-to-1. With eight decks, the off-the-top house edge is 10.361%.

Yet another side bet that can be counted in California card rooms:  the Total Shot Bonus (TSB). Formally, this side bet is for the baccarat variant known as Supreme Baccarat. This variant is simply the commission free version where a Banker winning total of 6 pays 1-to-2.  Like ordinary baccarat, the main game is not vulnerable to card counting.