In this blog post I covered the basics of advantage play against the Lucky Pairs (LP) baccarat side bet. After looking around a bit, I found that several “live-play” online casinos offer LP. It is easy to use perfect play against live-play online LP. An AP working from home can use whatever tools he has available without the usual scrutiny of the brick and mortar environment.
Advantage play against online casinos is not formally the topic of this blog. But when online casinos offer these live-play games, they open themselves to the same risks of exploitation by APs. Hole-carding is certainly going to be tough online. The AP can't sit in the right seat and gradually tip back his chair. But all the AP techniques based on counting cards become much stronger against these online live-play versions. The AP can track the exact composition of the remainder of the shoe and enter the cards played to a spreadsheet that gives the exact answer on what to do next. The LP wager has this type of vulnerability.
Here is a screen capture for part of what was returned from a Google search for "baccarat lucky pairs" (I visited the top link):
A simple spread sheet will tell the player his exact edge at any point in the shoe, based on the composition left in the shoe. Here is a sample spreadsheet that APs can use to gain an edge. This sheet can also be used on the casino side to investigate a suspected AP's action:
Lucky_Pairs_Perfect_Play (Excel spreadsheet)
The lesson here is that it is critically important that online live-play casinos protect against traditional land-based forms of advantage play; in particular, the vulnerability of LP. The easiest solution to fix LP is to cut off one full deck from an eight deck shoe.
