Lightning Baccarat: Our Review, How and Where to Play

As most baccarat games, Lightning Baccarat is played with 8 standard 52-card decks and the dealer draws cards from a shoe of previously shuffled cards. You will be betting on Banker, Player, or Tie, the three standard wagers in baccarat. Therefore, you will see three main betting areas for these three bets. There will also be two additional side bet areas for Banker Pair and Player Pair. We’ll discuss these in more detail in the special features section.

Betting on the Banker means that you stake your money on the Banker’s hand to beat the Player’s hand. The hand that has a value closest to 9 wins. To interpret the hand values you need to remember that Aces are ranked the lowest in a game of baccarat and they are worth 1 point each. Cards from 2 to 9 retain their face values, whereas 10s, Jacks, Queens, and Kings are worth 0 points.

Importantly, there are rules for drawing a third card. If the pile’s point total is between 0 and 5 after the first two cards, that side draws another. The only exception is if the banker already has 8 or 9, in which case the banker wins outright. This means that the banker side has a slight advantage – it’s more likely to win in the right circumstances. That’s why a 5% commission is charged on all banker wins.

The only other thing you need to know about how Lightning Baccarat works are the multipliers. We’ll explain these further down.

• Statistically speaking, you should see a Lightning card dawn once every 3 rounds.
• Some lightning cards are better than others, depending on which cards were discarded in previous rounds.
• In other words, some basic baccarat card counting can be quite useful.