Yes, Larry, the Banker hand is a bit more likely to win than the player hand, and for that reason the house takes a 5% commission on winning Banker wagers. Even in spite of the added commission, the house edge is still lower with a Banker wager at 1.06%, opposed to 1.24% on Player bets. Therefore, if the house edge is lower on a Banker wager, you should bet it every time, right? Yes, Larry, mathematically you should, but according to some readers of this column, their take is different. When in a past column I advocated just betting the Banker hand and dismissed scorecards figuring the numbers support the Banker bet as the statistically better wager, even if the difference is ever so slight, many readers wrote in describing that form of gaming action as just plain BORING, enough of them for me to take note to what they're saying. Does anybody really want to sit down at a Baccarat table and bet the Banker hand all night long, trading the fun gambling for a minuscule statistical gain? Probably not. There is a "fun factor" to guessing, and betting consistently on the Bank hand is akin to watching paint dry.

So, with both wagers having such a low casino advantage, you really can't go wrong betting either way.

As for scorecard use, most casinos do offer Baccarat players a scorecard for tracking the Player and Banker wins. Many Baccarat players believe various methods of tracking Player-Banker patterns predict future outcomes. Unfortunately, there is no statistical basis for the notion of finding predictable patterns in a shoe of well-shuffled cards.

Nevertheless, even if there is no advantage to doing so, keeping score does add some excitement (once again, that fun factor) to the game of Baccarat, and lately even I started the practice of jotting B-B-B-P-B-P-P-B's on a Baccarat scorecard, wearing my patented omniscience grin and pretending that scribbling P's and B's makes me all the more clairvoyant.

Gambling quote of the week: "The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling." Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)