Origins of the game
    Baccarat, also spelled Baccara, is a card game of Italian origin played principally in European casinos, having been introduced to France late in the 15th century. Its great popularity in France and England dates from the mid-1800s. It is now played around the world.
     It is a favourite in European gambling casinos. The tremendous stakes for which it is played, the systems — all fallacious — which have been devised for winning at it, and the fashionable people who most commonly play in the casinos, have given the game considerable glamour. In the USA it is almost never played, but its principal variant, Chemin-de-Fer, sometimes is. Other variants, differing only in banking arrangements, include Baccarat Banque and Punto Banco.

Basic rules and objectives
    Baccarat, based on the building of structures, and similar in principle, but not in form, to Blackjack or Twenty-One, is famous far beyond its merits as a game. Players bet against the banker that the point count of their hand will be closer to 9 than that of the banker's hand. Face cards and Tens count as zero.