Baccarat is still making inroads with the international gambling public. It is associated with high stakes and elegant dress; it is one of the most popular casino games in Europe and Latin America. Baccarat was the choice of the bon vivant kings of eighteenth-century Europe, and is still the favorite of the card-playing nobility.

Baccarat was introduced to the French upper class during the reign of Charles VII, in the late 1400s, and found a home in the country's many illegal gambling dens. The game fell prey to widespread cheating and suffered spotty popularity until legalization helped to rescue it at the turn of the twentieth century.

Early in the twentieth century, Chemin-de-fer, a version of Baccarat, became a hobby of the Prince of Wales, the future King of England VII. He brought it back to British casinos, where it became the rage. Until 1960, this version was also played in American casinos. Today's Baccarat, as it is currently played in Nevada and Atlantic City, is the same game in Monte Carlo, Deauville and San Remo, with slight exceptions, and is referred to as Punto Banco in Britain and elsewhere.

In its earliest origins, Baccarat is thought to have been played in various European cities for over five hundred years. However, David Parlett's authoritative A History of Card Games claims that, myths aside, no reliable record of the game exists before the middle of the nineteenth century. The best guess seems to be that it was an Italian invention, a spin-off of the French game, vingt-et-un, or 'twenty-one"-or, of course, what is called blackjack. It is similar to vingt-et-un in that participants draw cards in an attempt to get as close as possible to a set number without exceeding it. It differs from it, however, in several ways. First, the total aimed at is 9 rather than 21. Second, if that total is exceeded the player does not automatically lose, as in blackjack. Rather, the total cycles around a base of 10 so that if, for example, an 8 is drawn to a 5 the total is treated as 3. Finally, and most important, when an additional card may be pulled is determined by a fixed set of rules rather than being left up to the player's judgment. The name of the game comes from the Italian baccara, or "zero," and refers to the fact that in the game all ten-valued cards count as zero.