OFFSET
0,1
COMMENTS
Baccarat is a family of gambling card games (including Chemin-de-fer) usually played with three to six decks of standard playing cards. The value or point of a hand consists of the last digit of the sum of the individual card values, which are 0 for each face card or ten, 1 for each ace and the number shown for each other card; i.e., the point is the sum modulo 10. The object of the game is to come closer to the number 9 than the opponent(s) but by drawing only up to one additional card. A Table of Play determines when a player must receive a third card, must not receive a third card, or has the option - based upon the player's two-card hand's point; therefore there's little room for strategy. Finally, a two-card hand with point of 8 or 9 is called a natural and wins immediately except that a natural 9 beats a natural 8 and there can be ties. The sequence is different for a casual game played with a single deck of cards: 190,128,124,128,124,128,124,128,124,128 (although the terms are identical for odd points).
REFERENCES
P. Arnold, The Book of Card Games, Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1988, pp. 7-12.
A. H. Morehead and G. Mott-Smith, editors, Hoyle's Rules of Games, The New American Library, Inc., New York, 1963, pp. 178-180.
EXAMPLE
a(2) = 132 because - taking into account that there are three types of face cards, four suits and both cards may be identical (by coming from different original decks) - there are 132 distinct two-card hands where the point of the pair is 2: 0+2 (64 combinations), 1+1 (10), 3+9 (16), 4+8 (16), 5+7 (16) and 6+6 (10).
CROSSREFS
KEYWORD
fini,full,nonn
AUTHOR
Rick L. Shepherd, Dec 05 2004
STATUS
approved