Bacarrat History

Baccarat is a game that has been played for centuries, and has been thought of as the province of high rollers, playing in tuxedos in private rooms for thousands of dollars, up until modern times, when the great equalizer, the Internet, enabled even the lowest stakes players to enjoy baccarat at home in their underwear. But how and when did this classic game get started?

Baccarat Begins

Baccarat, in both Italian and French, mean “zero,” so the game is literally the “zero” game. It is said that the game is based on an Etruscan religious ritual where a virgin would be compelled to throw a nine sided die to decide her fate. If fortune shone upon her, she would roll an eight or a nine and become a priestess, a six or a seven meant she would walk away from the spiritual world all together. The odds were stacked against our poor virgin though; rolling a one through five meant a trip into the sea and her doom.

Baccarat Returns

Fortunately, today’s baccarat players do not face nearly as dire a fate, as long as they don’t bet their life savings on the wrong side. However, the goal, to get an eight or a nine, remains the same. The baccarat we know today first popped up in 15th century France, and was initially played exclusively by the French nobility before it was introduced into the general casino population.

Later the French developed “Chemin de Fer,” a version of the game which gave the player much more power than in the classic Baccarat, where a gambler simply wagered on one side or the other and watched helplessly to see the outcome. This is the game that James Bond has been seen playing in the classic films, and a variation of this game is what turned up in American casinos in the 1950s.

Baccarat Forever

The first evolution of the game that brought baccarat to the masses was mini-baccarat, a simplified version of the game that could accommodate multiple players more easily. Today, online baccarat can be enjoyed by anyone, and is a great way to get into online casino gambling with a minimum of gaming experience.