Baccarat is one of the most popular casino games in the world. It is a simple game to learn and it is played for high stakes in many European and Nevada casinos. The objective of the game is to bet on a hand that will be closest to nine. The game is played with eight decks of cards, and a player’s or banker’s hand wins if the total of their first two cards is 8 or 9. If the first two hands don’t produce a natural, additional cards are drawn to decide the winner.

A Baccarat dealer is the person who hands out the cards and runs the game. There are two gaming spaces at a Baccarat table, called the player’s space and the banker’s space. Each space is reserved for players who have placed a bet on the outcome of the hand. The game is governed by rules that dictate how the cards are dealt and how the bets are made.

Before the cards are dealt, the player and banker place their wagers. The bets are then placed in the corresponding boxes on the table. The winning bet is the one that is closest to 9 in value. A winning banker hand pays out 1 to 1, and a winning player hand pays out eight to one. A tie bet pays no money.

The simplest way to play Baccarat is by betting on the Player or Banker hands. The goal is to have the hand that you are betting on win, or get as close to nine as possible. The final digit is determined by adding up all the pips on the card (clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades): an Ace counts as zero, while a 7 and a 9 count as ten.

In Baccarat, the simplest way to hit nine is to roll 2 and 6, or simply drop the first digit in order to have a total of 15. However, it is important to note that a ten-point total can still be won with a 5 and a 4 as well.

Baccarat’s popularity has grown rapidly over the past 20 years, as Asian high rollers have embraced it as their game of choice. The game is particularly suited to their cultural preferences, as it emphasizes simplicity, low minimum bet amounts, and the ability to predict the outcome of a hand by looking for trends in the game’s history.

According to Bill Zender, a former Nevada Gaming Control Agent and casino executive who literally wrote the book on managing casino games, baccarat has seen an increase in popularity because of its ability to attract high rollers with high incomes. It is also a popular choice for high rollers because it offers lower house edges than most casino games.

In addition, the game’s reputed security is another attractive feature. Unlike other casino games, baccarat dealers don’t deal from a shoe, and each game is dealt by a different dealer. This allows casinos to monitor each hand for any patterns in the game’s results and to make adjustments to improve security. Additionally, a separate machine is used to shuffle the decks before each game. This process can be more time consuming than simply dealing from pre-shuffled cards, but it provides a higher level of security and eliminates the possibility of edge sorting, which was the cause of Phil Ivey’s $10 million dispute with an Atlantic City casino.