Baccarat scoreboards
Baccarat, also known as punto banco, is one of the most popular casino games in all over the world, especially among high-rollers and Asian gamblers. Baccarat is extremely dominant in Macau casinos. The name “Baccarat” means “zero” in old French/Italian dialects, this is because all the tens and face cards have the value of 0. The aim of the game is to predict which side will have the higher score in the end of the game round, the Player or the Banker. Player can also place a bet on Tie, which is won when both sides have the same score in the end of the game round. The scoring in Baccarat it quite simple, card values are added up to get the hand score and if hand score reaches ten or exceeds it then just the last digit is counted, meaning the highest possible score is nine. For example, a seven and a five would count as two instead of twelve. Baccarat is a relatively simple game of comparing cards and doesn’t need much time for a beginner to start playing.
Many gamblers are very superstitious and believe that they have a better chance to predict the next outcome when they track the past scores and results. Therefore, when betting, many players heavily rely on a system of scoreboards. Many Asian players look at the scoring boards very carefully before each bet and even choose the table to play in based on the patterns in the scoring boards. Scoreboards system for a beginner though is not so straight forward as the game and needs further explanation before anyone could utilise them fully.
The purpose of the scoreboards is to see if there are any trends or re-occurrences in the shoe, so it would be possible to “predict” the next outcome. Technically speaking, the scoreboards do NOT guarantee that the next entry would be either of the sides, however they are successful in showing you any trends that occurred in the past game rounds. There are tons of different strategies and actions people would suggest you to take if a certain pattern occurs on the scoreboards, but it all finally comes down to what you make of it yourself, thus adding an element of excitement to the game.
In this article we cover how the scoreboards in OneTouch Baccarat work in detail and what are the edge cases to consider when implementing scoreboards
Scoreboards
Baccarat scoreboards generally consist of 5 different boards that are: Bead Road, Big Road, Big Eye Boy, Small Road and finally the Cockroach Pig (you read it right 😄). There is something called the “Predictor” that is generally also included alongside the boards, the purpose of it and all of the other boards will be explained later in the article.
After a game round, one new marker will be added to Bead Road and Big Road, all other roads will be updated according to the input of Big Road.
Bead Road
Let’s start off with the Bead Road (a.k.a. Bead plate). The purpose of this board is to give an exact representation of game history. The “markers” ( i.e. the coloured circle in a cell) are placed on the board from top to bottom & move left to right when a column is filled. The colour of the marker stands for the winner of the round (red-banker, blue-player, green-tie). The number inside the marker shows the hand score. Additional indicators are added onto the marker to express a banker/player pair inside a hand (red/blue circles in the corners of the cell).
Also it is good to note, that a general approach is to shift all cells one column to the left when a board is filled with markers and there is no room to move to the next column. This will remove the leftmost column from the board. This behaviour is exercised on all of the boards.
Big Road
This road is the base for all other roads. All other roads will derive from Big Road.
Each filled column on this board shows how many consecutive wins have happened for either banker or player (red-banker, blue-player, the same as in Bead Road). The circles are hollow & the hand score is not present inside. Entries will only be added in the same column if they are the same colour as the previous entry, i.e. If the marker we want to add is Blue, but the one we added before is RED, we need to add it on the next column. But if it is the same colour, then add onto the end of the row.
If there is a tie, we will draw a green line on the corner of the cell for the most recent entry. If the board is empty and the first entry is a tie, then we will draw the green line on the corner of the initial empty cell, the same cell will be populated with a red or blue marker when there is a Banker/Player win. If there are consecutive ties, a number representing the tie count will be added inside the cell.
Circles will have a yellow dot inside if the win was a “natural”. A “natural” is a hand that has a score of 9 or 8 with two cards.
Markers in Big Road will display Banker/Player pairs the same way as in Bead Road.
Dragon Tails
A “Dragon Tail” is formed when a column on a board is filled and because there is no room left for another entry in the same column, it turns right from the bottom, leaving a sort of tail like appearance.
Players usually start betting on the tail when it is formed (i.e. the bet area that is causing the tail), hence the catchphrase “follow the dragon”.
There are lots of peculiarities regarding tails, so let’s go over them one by one.
Double Dragon
The Double Dragon is formed when two tails land side by side to each other.
Note, the dragon tails on the left side of the image are considered a Double Dragon, while the tails on the right side of the image are not
Triple-, Quadruple- or Quintuple Dragon
Yep, this is also a possibility, an extremely rare one.
Sextuple Dragon
In other words, a dragon tail that occurs six times in a row. Since there is no room for the tail to go down, it will immediately turn right and continue. If a different colour entry would be added into the board, the entry will be placed next to the column where the last tail ends, as marked in the image below.
Tail positioning
Now that we know tails exist and they turn right to prevent collision with each other, we will take a look at some positioning strategies to help better distinguish dragon tails from other dragon tails.
If there are consecutive dragon tails, and the tail above gets longer than the one below, it is common for the tail above to drop down, freeing more space above for future entries to occupy.
If the tails are the same colour, then we move one extra cell forward before dropping down. This way we can clearly distinguish where both tails start and end.
If a column is dropping just in the end of a same colour dragon tail, then we move one extra cell to the right before moving down. By using this approach, we can clearly distinguish both tails apart from each other. This is better visualised in the image below.
All the above actions can be dismissed if we draw a line inside each colliding dragon tail, this way we can always see where an individual dragon tail begins and ends. This approach is more common on scoreboards that are manually filled (on paper with pencil).
The Derived Roads
These roads consist of the remaining 3: Big Eye Boy, Small Road and Cockroach Pig.
This is where things get complicated, so I suggest you treat yourself to a cup of coffee or some tea to help you bear through. This is also the reason I decided to write this article, because I simply did not find any good source that would explain to me in-depth how it all works, sure there were formulas but none of them actually worked fully, so here we are.
Let’s go over some things before we really jump into details. The roads are called derived roads because they derive from the Big Road. The Big Road is the base where the input determines the output for the derived roads. The derived roads all have different style markers, usually Big Eye Boy will have a hollow circle, Small Road will have a solid circle & Cockroach Pig will have a diagonal line or a triangle inside the cells of the board.
Naturals, player/banker pairs and ties are ignored on the derived roads. If a tie occurs on Big Road, the entry for all of the derived roads will be skipped. If a natural/pair occurs then an entry will be added to each derived road, but the entry will not have a yellow dot inside the marker NOR will there be a green line in marker cell corner.
All the markers are either red or blue, but it is important to note that red means that there is some form of trend indicated from the shoe, while blue means the shoe seems to be “choppy” or “chaotic” with no seeming recurrences or trends.
Now, this part is important, because this is where you either win your bet, or lose it. Please be advised that the formula determining trends should not be taken as the “source of all truth”, the formula does not take into account all possible combinations & permutations of the marker positions to determine an “absolute” correct equation for a trend, rather its a gimmick. But to be more precise, the formula does determine a trend to some specific extent, yes, even so, this does not mean the trend would continue for the next hand. The general formula itself was assumingly created around 1970 in Macau, this was when the derived roads were created. The formula will be explained in detail next in the article.
The formula
Now let’s talk about the way red / blue markers get placed on the derived roads.
Here we introduce a variable named “n”. This variable is changed in the formula to output either Big Eye Boy, Small Road or Cockroach Pig. The numerical value of n is stated below.
Big Eye Boy: n = 1
Small Road: n = 2
Cockroach Pig: n = 3
Before we can add any entries into derived roads, there has to be enough entries in Big Road first. We can start adding entries into derived roads if Big Road has a marker in either :
Column : n + 1,
Row : 2orColumn : n + 2,
Row : 1
This is how it looks like:
Now that we have enough data in Big Road we can start filling the derived road with entries. Let’s take a closer look of how we determine if there is a trend (i.e. add red marker) or when there is randomness (i.e. add blue marker).
There are two actions that can happen in Big Road. The first one is increment row, this will add a marker in the same column where the previous marker was, making the row longer, optionally making a dragon tail in the bottom if no more room left. The second is increment column, this happens when a different colour marker is added into the next column, this means a new column is started and the marker goes into the first row.
According to what action happened on Big Road, a set of comparisons are made between the markers to determine what colour marker to insert into derived roads. Also, if a draw happens, then no entry will be added into derived roads for that step. We will use variables activeRow & activeCol to keep track on where our most latest entry on Big Road is located, we will call this the activeCell.
In executing a comparison, we are looking if the cell we are comparing & the cell we are comparing it against are both either empty or not empty. If it is so, the comparison is true (red marker), else it is false (blue marker).
There are 3 types of comparisons used in this* formula:
COMPARE_LEFT
COMPARE_LEFT_COLUMNS
COMPARE_UPIn COMPARE_LEFT, we compare the activeCell to the cell that is n times to the left of it.
In COMPARE_UP, we compare the activeCell with the cell that is directly above it.
In COMPARE_LEFT_COLUMNS, we compare if the column of activeCell is the same depth as the column n times to the left of it (column depth = row count + dragon tail length).
The current comparison type will be stored in a variable called compareDirection, so that we would know what type currently is active.
The formula presented in this article is created by me the author, and is inspired by other materials that I have researched and are available on the web. This formula is more suited to be implemented into a computer program, rather than studied by heart to manually create scoreboards.
This is how the formula looks like:
The formula should be run each time an entry is added into Big Road.
All comparisons are done on Big Road, no other road should be compared or used for the successful execution of the formula.
When executing the formula, it’s important to parse all variables for the next execution. So for example if the compareDirection changes to COMPARE_UP in the end of the formula, then the next execution should have compareDirection already equalling COMPARE_UP.
The activeCol is the column on Big Road, where the activeCell is currently located inside of. Same for activeRow.
One execution of the formula will output a single marker colour, or nothing at all, if there is a tie or not enough data on Big Road.
Feel free to contact me or leave a comment if you have any questions or find any discrepancies in the formula or any other part of the article regarding scoreboards.
The Predictor board
The Predictor board, as name suggests, does a prediction for the next round. The prediction is done for the derived roads to see if a trend is likely to continue or is it likely to end. The markers on the predictor board show what output will occur on the derived roads if the next entry on Big Road is a Banker win (left side on predictor) or a Player win (right side on predictor). Initially the predictor will be empty of markers, but as Big Road starts to fill with entries, the Predictor will also start to make predictions if enough entries are obtained for the formula (please consult image “Trend formula first execution positions”).
If we look at the image above, we can see that the predictor suggests a Banker win for the next round, this is because there are more red markers on the Banker side of the board, then on the Player side.
On the Banker side, the Small Road & Cockroach Pig suggest a trend for a Banker win (red), but the Big Eye Boy does not (blue). On the Player side we see the opposite. The predictor uses the same formula that is used in the derived roads, it just shows the output from all derived roads for the next Banker & Player win scenarios. Through this we can see where we should bet for an attempt to follow the past trend and hopefully win our bet back.
Again, keep in mind, the prediction is not a guarantee, like is mentioned before in the article, the formula is not absolute and is not able to predict the future, like you can see for yourself by studying the formula brought out in this article. Still it can add a level of excitement into the game, to try and spot a trend.
Statistics
Scoreboards also have a counter of past results, this will help to have an overview of how many game rounds have been played and how many of those rounds were won by Banker or Player. Additionally it gives an overview of how many of those rounds had a Banker/Player pair, a tie or a natural.
Conclusion
Congratulations, now you know the in’s and out’s of Baccarat scoreboards, the reason for them and a representation of how to use them. If you think this was helpful for you, why not leave a clap or two, thanks!
If you would like to play around with the boards and try them out for yourself, you can try out the same scoreboards discussed in this article by visiting OneTouch.io and opening Baccarat Supreme.
Finally a disclaimer regarding Baccarat scoreboards. Technically speaking, if you make a bet on either Banker or Player, then you have a 50% chance for a win. But if you study the scoreboards, take into account any trends that may have occurred in the previous game rounds and conclude also the predictor board result, your odds still remain 50% chance for a win, in other words, it does not matter.
Have a good day!
