Laying out "What game is baccarat?" plainly starts with the rules. Baccarat and the casino poker games share a table, a dealer and a fixed house edge, and all of them are simpler than they look. Baccarat asks only which hand to back, while games such as three card poker, Caribbean stud and ultimate Texas holdem let a player make a few decisions against the dealer. Knowing the rules step by step and the edge of each bet is most of what tells them apart.
Ultimate Texas holdem is played against the dealer: each player posts an ante and a blind, sees two cards, and may raise three or four times the ante before the flop or less later. To deal ultimate Texas holdem, the dealer gives two cards to each player and to the house, then turns five shared cards in stages. What a casino poker rake means is different: in poker played between players, the house takes a small share of each pot instead of holding an edge, which is how card rooms earn.
What happens when the player and banker both reach nine, a result players call two nines, is a tie, as with any other equal total: tie bets win, and bets on either hand are usually returned. Baccarat is a game of chance rather than skill, since the drawing rules are fixed and the only choice is which hand to back. It is not beatable over time, though the banker bet has one of the smallest edges on the casino floor. It is also a fast paced game, dealing a hand in well under a minute.
After a shoe is dealt, casinos usually destroy the cards or sell them as souvenirs, partly because players bend them during the squeeze; online games use fresh decks.
After ante and blind, a player may raise three or four times the ante before the flop and less later. A rake, by contrast, is the pot share card rooms take.
Two nines are a tie like any other equal total, so tie bets win and bets placed on banker or player are usually returned.
Caribbean stud carries a house edge above five percent on its main bet, and Mississippi stud, played against a pay table, also has a high edge.
A bettor backs the banker hand, the player hand or a tie, and after that single choice the cards are dealt under fixed rules.