Baccarat is a fun and exciting game, though new players may be intimidated when they fist sit at a table. The game is very fast paced and in order to be able to follow it, players need to be able to learn the values of the hands that will determine the winning hand. When playing the game, the only thing players will have to do is choose to bet on the banker’s hand, the player’s hand or that these hands will be a tie. The value of the cards is extremely important in the game and the values of the hands will determine whether a third card is used.

The value of the hand is directly related to the cards that are dealt. The cards that are from 2 to 9 will be worth their face value. An ace will count as one and all other cards are worth 0. To calculate the value of the hand, all cards are added and if this results in a double digit, the ten value will be dropped. Let’s say the hand has a 9 and a 5. This gives a total value of 14, but when the 10 is removed, the final total of the hand is just 4. This allows hands to end up with a value of 0 to 9, with 9 being the desirable hand. The hand that has the closest value to 9 will be declared the winner of the game.

When the game begins, two cards are dealt to the banker and player hand. If the value of these cards in the player hand ranges from 0 to 5, a third card will be dealt. However, of the banker hand has a value of 8 and 9, the third card will not be drawn. In any other case, no third card is used. Luckily, when playing online, all of these decisions are made by the software, so ultimately, players just need to bet on a hand and have an understanding of the hand values and how they are calculated.

For the banker hand, a third card is dealt when the hand value is between 6 and 7. This difference is one that will confuse many players, so playing free baccarat will surely help any new player become familiar with hand values as well as the third card rule.