Five-Count Baccarat © 2012 Silverthorne Publications. All Rights Reserved
Five-Count Baccarat © 2012 Silverthorne Publications. All Rights Reserved
Five-Count Baccarat © 2012 Silverthorne Publications. All Rights Reserved
card. I usually do both. Some casinos, like Rio in Las Vegas, combine rating slot,
video poker and table players on one card. Others track machine and table action
separately. However, it usually pays to join the slot club, even if you are mostly
a table game player.
In many ways, slot club players have an advantage over the table game players.
Their rating is automatic, they don't have to get the attention of some boss. By
joining the slot club, they start receiving mailing from the casino. I have
received offers of free rooms from casinos where I had never played a slot
machine, but had joined their slot club.
If you are just establishing your rating and want to get a room on a crowded
weekend, your slot club membership can be invaluable. After the reservation clerk
tells you there are no rooms available, tell her you are a member of the slot club or
ask to speak to a slot host. Chances are, the casino will find a room for you.
Getting to know the casino personal is critical. The more the casino personnel
know and like you, the more comps are likely to flow your way. This is even true
for slot players with their automated rating system. A slot host can easily "bump
up" your comp from a buffet for two to a coffee shop comp for two, even if your
rating is not quite there.
With table players, interacting with the pit personnel is critical. A boss can make
or break you in terms of your rating. If your average wager is $25, your goal is to
be rated as at least a $50 to $75 player. It is not enough to increase your wagers
when the boss is looking, you need to be a nice person.
108
Playing with front money gives the casino a real shot at beating you. When you
deposit the money in the cage, the casino knows that they have a shot at winning
all of your front money. If you are willing to risk $10,000, this will open the door
to full RFB at most establishments.
When you play with front money, be sure to put it all in play. If you deposit
$10,000, draw markers for the full ten grand. This doesn't mean you should lose
the money. If you look like a loser and the casino sees that you have put all of
your front money into play, your rating will increase.
Remember to look like a loser. You can save your bragging for when you get
home. Appear to lose, but lose gracefully. Dealers and bosses hear players
gripe about losing every day. Look like a loser but don't complain.
If you run into a fantastic winning streak, don't worry about disguising the fact
that you are a winner. The bosses will know that you are winning. If you try to
hide enough chips to turn a big win into a loss, they'll know. When you have a
big win, act like a winner. Go ahead and tip a little more. If you are playing
craps, shouting is not out of line. I have had some of my best comps come out of
big wins as casinos hate to see winners walk out the door with their money.
When you combine getting the maximum number of comps with the Five-Count
Baccarat System, you are in the best position to maximize your profits from
casino gambling.
109
If you at least break even, then the comps you receive constitute a profit for
your play. If you are able to win money at the casino games, then your profit
will be even greater.
110
Casino Etiquette
I said him, because boorish, obnoxious behavior nearly always comes from males,
with very few females managing to become the perfect asses that males seem to
delight in being.
Casinos seem to attract a higher than normal number of persons with a need to
blow off at some unfortunate casino employee. The times I have somehow gotten
in the middle of these disputes, I nearly always take the side of the dealer or floor
person, especially if a male patron is unjustifiably berating a female employee for
no reason other than he has poor control over his gambling, managed to lose
much more than that should have, and is now looking for a scape goat.
For most persons who visit casinos, etiquette is simply a matter of common
courtesy. It's okay to get a little wild in a casino. These are supposed to be places
of fun, and drinking a little too much may be part of the entertainment. But for a
successful Five-Count Baccarat System player, the rules are not quite the same.
The casino is your place of employment and drinking should be limited. It goes
without saying, courteous behavior should be practiced at all times.
At all casino table games, the rules of etiquette are pretty simple. Treat the dealers
and other players with respect and avoid being loud, pushy or belligerent. If you
111
get into a disagreement with a dealer, stay calm and be gracious even if the dealer
really is wrong. It does not make sense to win an argument over a single payoff.
1. When you have finished playing, you can ask the dealer to color you up
before leaving the table.
2. Watch your own bets at all times. Baccarat bets are easy to track as you
handle the bets yourself and place them directly in front of you.
3. Don't force your way into a crowded table. If the table is crowded ask the
nearest player if he minds if you join them.
4. Don't slow down the game by constantly asking the dealer basic questions
about how the game is played or how bets are made. There are hundreds of
books on how to play baccarat including this one. You should learn the correct
payoffs for the bets you will be making.
5. Try to be discrete about your wins and losses. No one really cares to know
how much you are winning, and it doesn't do you any good to advertise
that you are a consistent winner.
6. While playing, conduct yourself courteously at all times. If you drink, refrain
from overdoing it and never get drunk. You will need to stay alert to correctly
make the wagers required by the Five-Count Baccarat System, and contrary to
the opinion of some drunks, alcohol does not make you think clearer.
7. Toke the dealers. Dealers call tips "tokes" as in a token of appreciation. Many
players don't realize that dealers are not paid much more than minimum wage.
Baccarat dealers try very hard to please the public. Most dealers want the players
112
to win and have a good time. They know that if the players enjoy themselves
and win, they will get toked. I always toke the dealers. If I win more I will toke
them more, but even if I lose, I will make several bets for the dealer. This is not
only the right thing to do but will pay you off in spades if you do it consistently.
Even floor personnel know who the tippers are, and my experience has been
that if you tip, you will be more than repaid by hard working dealers, who will
watch out for your bets and by casino complimentaries, controlled by and large
by pit personnel who rate your play.
___________
It's time to pull together everything we have learned. The next chapter reviews
all aspects of the Five-Count Baccarat System and gives you a concrete game
plan you can put into action.
113
How to Win With the Five-Count Baccarat System
Most people approach casino gambling as a lark, and little consideration is given to the
amount of time, money or psychological preparation necessary for winning. Some
attention is given to finding a "system" or "gimmick" and off the player goes to try his
hand at winning. Needless to say, this approach hardly ever works.
Some work and advance preparation are essential to becoming a consistent winner
at roulette or any other casino game.
The advance preparation is fairly easy. First, read and understand this book. The
easiest way to practice is to play in an online casino on your home computer in
“practice mode” where no money is risked. This will give you a realistic feel for
baccarat as it is played, whether you play online or in a land-based game.
Practice is essential for two reasons. First, by practicing you will gain a greater
understanding of the system than you ever will by just reading about it. Secondly,
practicing the system will give you a greater feel for it than I can ever convey by
describing it. In practicing this strategy, you will gain a level of confidence in your play
which is important before you ever venture forth to take on a casino.
In a casino, your enemy is not the casino or the dealer. It is your own lack of self-
control. If you can control yourself and have a mastery of your approach, you will
become a winner. If you can't, then it is unlikely that the Five-Count Baccarat System
or any other system can make you a winner.
After you have learned and practiced this strategy, you will want to begin planning to
apply it in a casino. “What?” you say. Planning? I just spent time learning the darned
thing! What's this planning? Why can't I just jump in my car or get on a plane, arrive at a
location that has baccarat and start playing? Or, why can’t I just get online, pick an
online casino and start playing baccarat?
114
Planning begins with determining the size of bankroll you will take for your Five-Count
Baccarat System Sessions. The amount you take for an excursion to a casino(s) is called
the Trip Bankroll, and it should be three to four times the size of bankroll required to
play a game. If you decide to play online, you can use these same concepts. Here your
“Trip Bankroll” can be thought of as your total bankroll for online play.
It is necessary to use a larger bankroll for a trip to provide for an adequate cushion
against losses. If, for example, you decided that since the loss rate is so low (about one
in nine games), you would only take the amount needed to play one game. What would
you do if the loss occurred in the first session, or even the first half dozen sessions?
You would not have a large enough bankroll to continue to play baccarat, and you
would be "tapped out" even with a winning system.
It is far better to plan for the worst and then do your best to prevent it from occurring.
The following table summarizes the session and trip bankrolls required for each level of
wagering.
Five-Count Baccarat
Base Bets, Game Bankroll and Total Bankroll
115
Needless to say, this bankroll should come from money that is extra and will not be
needed for living expenses. If you take the money needed to pay your mother's medical
bill for gambling, the psychological pressure will probably be too much for you, and in
general, this is just not a good way to approach any speculative venture.
After building your bankroll and practicing the system until you can perform it
flawlessly, you may begin your final preparations for a gambling excursion. You
should have an adequate number of Five-Count Counter Forms, a notebook for
recording the results of your play and a game plan for your trip.
A trip game plan can be very informal consisting of an itinerary with playing time
scheduled in a general way. You don't have to have every minute scheduled, but I
have found that my mental attitude is improved if I have planned a definite amount of
time for gambling as well as other activities.
Assume that your bankroll is $500. You are planning a trip to Las Vegas and you find
out that the minimum baccarat bets accepted are $10 bets.
You check with the table presented a couple of pages ago and see that the bankroll
required to use the Five-Count Baccarat System with $10 unit bets is $900. You can see
that you don’t have a large enough bankroll to play at this level.
Looking at the previous table showing bankroll requirements you can see that you really
only have a couple of choices now. You can postpone using the Five-Count Baccarat
System in Las Vegas until you save another $400 and have the bankroll required.
Or, you can play online in a game with lower minimum wagers where your $500
bankroll will be adequate. You can literally “build” the bankroll needed for the Las
Vegas trip from your winnings playing online.
116
You see that you have enough of a bankroll to play online making $5 Base Bets since
$500 is more than adequate to play at this level.
Next you check with the table presented in a previous chapter (which is repeated below
for your reference) to see what kind of hourly win rates you can expect playing online
making $5 Base Bets.
Five-Count Baccarat
Hourly Win Rates at Different Levels of Play in
Land-based and Online Casinos Game Rates: Land-
based = 80 rounds per hour. Online = 300 rounds per
hour
The table above shows average hourly winnings of $372 an hour for a $5 Base Bettor
playing at a rate of 300 rounds per hour. This rate of play can easily be achieved playing
online.
117
Let’s assume that you will average about $372 an hour making $5 bets. Now the
calculations are pretty simple. You need to win $400 to build your bankroll from $500 to
$900. This may be summarized as:
Now, compute how long it will take you to win the $400 needed to bring your
bankroll up to $900. Assuming you win an average of $372 an hour, we have: $400 /
$372 an hour = 1.08 hours.
Lets say you have a week before you leave for Vegas. You have plenty of time to play a
little over an hour online, pull in $400 and head to Las Vegas.
When you arrive at your choice of gambling locale, it is important that you arrive
prepared, confident that you have mastered the Five-Count Baccarat System, determined
a plan of action, brought your needed materials with you, planned the correct bankroll
and developed a playing schedule for your trip.
Come to the baccarat table confident about yourself and your game plan. Although
you will undoubtedly enjoy the edge you have over other players, make sure that
your enjoyment never interferes with your plan to beat the dealer.
118
Summary of the Five-Count Baccarat System
Using this strategy successfully consists of learning two parts of the strategy.
1. Start a game by observing the two previous decisions. You will need to know what
the two previous decisions were because you will always base your bet on the outcome
of the second preceding decision.
2. With BRB betting you will always bet that the second preceding decision will Repeat
or that it will Chop. We use R and C to stand for these patterns of betting.
3. Always begin a game using the R pattern. Continue using the R pattern until losing
two bets in a row.
4. After losing two bets in a row betting the R pattern, chance to the C pattern on the
next round of play.
5. Bets will change from using the R pattern, which is limited to two consecutive losses,
to the C pattern which is limited to one loss.
The BRB Method is weighted more toward repeating patterns than chopping ones. This
was done after testing many different betting systems. This one works the best with the
Betting Formula used by Five-Count Baccarat players. You should note that this pattern
is optimized specifically for baccarat and is not optimized for use in other casino games
such as roulette, craps or sic bo.
119
The table below illustrates several wagers made using the BRB Betting Method.
The Five-Count Formula groups bets into three types of bets – Attack Bets, Recovery
Bets and Profit Betting.
The Attack Group consists of three bets. For $5 base betting these bets are: 5 10 15.
Attack Bets
The rules for making bets in the Attack Group are as follows:
120
1. Start with the lowest bet in the group, in this case a $5 bet.
2. If the bet loses, raise the next bet one level. If the bet wins, continue to make the
same bet. If there have been two wins in a row and the next bet is $5, use the rules for
Profit Betting.
3. If a bet wins, drop the bet one level. If you win two bets in a row or two out of three
bets, drop the next bet two levels. Example: Win a bet on $15. Lose a bet on $10. Win a
bet on $15. The next bet will be on $5, since we won two out of three bets.
4. If the largest bet in the Attack Group is lost move into Recovery Betting.
Recovery Bets
The second group of bets used with the Five-Count Formula are the Recovery Bets.
The Recovery Bets used with $5 Base Bets consists of: 20 40.
1. Begin making Recovery Bets upon the loss of the highest Attack Bet (a Level 3 Bet).
2. With Recovery Betting your goal is to win one Recovery Bet. Upon the win of either
Recovery Bet, you will drop to making a Level 2 Attack Bet in the next round. Example:
121
Bet $20 and lose. Bet $40 and win. Drop to a $10 Attack Bet. If this bet wins drop to
a Level 1 $5 bet. If the bet loses, increase the next bet to a Level 3 bet.
Profit Betting
After winning two consecutive bets, you will go into Profit Betting Mode. Profit Betting
is always based on making a Level 1 bet. Here are some examples of wins leading up to
starting Profit Betting.
A. Win a Level 5 bet of $40 and then win a Level 2 bet of $10. The next bet will be a
Level 1 bet of $5 which can be turned into a Profit Bet.
B. Win a Level 3 bet of $15, followed by a Level 2 bet of $10. The next bet will be a
Level 1 bet of $5 which can be turned into a Profit Bet.
1. You must have won two wagers in a row and be at a Level 1 bet to start profit betting.
2. In Profit Betting Mode you will make a wager of $7 instead of the normal level 1 bet of $5.
If the bet wins, you will reduce the next bet to $5. If this bet wins, increase the next bet to $6
and with each additional win increase the next bet by +2. This series can be written as:
7 – 5 – 6 – 8 – 10 and so on.
3. Any loss ends Profit Betting. The loss is counted as the loss of a Level 1 bet so that
the next bet will be a Level 2 bet.
122
Five-Count Baccarat Profit Bets
The following example shows a series of bets where all modes of betting are used.
123
Example of Making $5 Base Bets Using the Five-Count Formula
A = Attack Bet R = Recovery Bet P = Profit Bets
Ref Bet Type & Bet Amount Bet Outcome Running Total
Level
1 A-1 5 -5 -5
2 A-2 10 -10 -15
3 A-3 15 -15 -30
4 R-4 20 +20 -10
5 A-2 10 +10 -0-
6 P-1 7 +7 +7
7 P-1 5 +5 +12
8 P-1 6 +6 +18
9 P-1 8 +8 +26
10 P-1 10 -10 +16
11 A-2 10 +10 +26
12 A-1 5 +5 +31
13 P-1 7 +7 +38
Starter Bets
A starter bet is a neutral bet made only to start a game. You will need to make this bet
whenever the house requires a wager in order to start a game, and you are the only
player at the table. You will encounter this situation with online baccarat games where
you are playing a computer-controlled game which will only deal a round of play if you
have a bet placed.
A Starter Bet will consist of a bet equal to the minimum wager allowed by the house. If
the minimum bet required is $1, bet $1 to start the game. If the minimum is $5, bet $5 to
get started.
You can wager your first Starter Bet on either Player or Banker to get the game going.
124
You will need at least two rounds of play in order to have the information needed to set up
Baccarat Rhythm Betting, which is based on the outcome of the second preceding bet.
Once you know the second preceding bet, which is a decision bet, not a Tie, you will start
a game by using the Repeat Pattern and making a wager that the second preceding
decision will repeat. From here on you will follow the betting rules for Baccarat Rhythm
Betting and the Five-Count Betting Formula.
I have found that the best way to win consistently is to play with a definite Win Goal
in mind.
You can think of a Win Goal as your immediate profit objective in playing baccarat.
Many players like to play for whole shoes or play for preset time periods. These are not
the best ways to win consistently.
Consistent winners will play for predetermined Win or Profit Goals. Each level of play
has a different Win Goal which is dependent on the size of the bankroll used.
In general, the size of the minimum bet to be made determines bets to be used in the
Five-Count Formula.
The size of the Base Bet determines the amount of the buy-in or Game Bankroll needed
to play at that level.
And, the Game Bankroll determines the Win Goal for each level of play.
The following table shows the Base Bets, Attack Bets, Recovery Bets, Win Goals,
Game Bankrolls and Total Bankrolls for play ranging from $1 to $1,000 Base Bets.
125
Base Bets – are the smallest bets used at each level of play. The Base Bets may be the
same as the minimum bets set by the house or they may be larger than the minimum
wagers allowed. For example, you might want to use the Set Up for $3 Base Bets in a
Game requiring $1 minimum bets. However, you couldn’t make $1 Base Bets in a game
with $3 minimum bets.
Attack Bets – are governed by the same playing rules for any level of play. You will
always start a game making the lowest level Attack Bet. The loss of the highest level
Attack Bet will always trigger a move to Recovery Betting.
Recovery Bets – follow a standard set of rules. These bets are only used after losing
the first three levels of Attack Bets. The win of any Recovery Bet will trigger a move
back to the second highest Attack Bet on the next round of play.
Win Goal – is your objective in playing a game. Once you reach a Win Goal, you can
consider a game won and you can take a break from play. However, you can also follow
our procedures to Reset the system back to a Level 1 Attack Bet and to continue playing.
Game Bankroll – is the amount of cash you will exchange for chips to start a game in a
land-based casino. It also acts as the largest amount you can possibly lose in a game as
you will never increase the size of your Game Bankroll in the middle of a game. I use
the concepts of Game Bankroll and Buy-in interchangeably, where a buy-in is the
amount of cash converted to chips to start a game.
Total Bankroll – is the total amount you need to set aside for using this system. We
recommend that you have an amount five times the size of your Game Bankroll.
126
Five-Count Baccarat
Base Bets, Attack Bets, Recovery Bets, Win Goals,
Game Bankrolls and Total Bankrolls
Base Attack Bets Recovery Bets Win Goals Game Total
Bets Bankrolls Bankrolls
$1 123 4 8 $8 $18 $90
$2 246 8 16 $16 $36 $180
$3 369 12 24 $24 $54 $270
$5 51015 20 40 $40 $90 $450
$8 81624 32 64 $64 $144 $720
$10 10 20 30 40 80 $80 $180 $900
$15 15 30 45 60 120 $120 $270 $1350
$20 20 40 60 80 160 $160 $360 $1800
$25 25 50 75 100 200 $200 $450 $2250
$35 35 70 105 140 280 $280 $630 $3150
$50 50 100 150 200 400 $400 $900 $4500
$75 75 150 225 300 600 $600 $1350 $6750
$100 100 200 300 400 800 $800 $1800 $9000
$200 200 400 600 800 1600 $1600 $3600 $18000
$300 300 600 900 1200 2400 $2400 $5400 $27000
$400 400 800 1200 1600 3200 $3200 $7200 $36000
$500 500 1000 1500 2000 4000 $4000 $9000 $45000
$750 750 1500 2250 3000 6000 $6000 $13,500 $67,500
$1000 1000 2000 3000 4000 8000 $8000 $18,000 $90,000
127