In 1953, Ian Fleming’s debut novel, Casino Royale, told the tale of British secret agent James Bond and his battle of wits with criminal mastermind Le Chiffre. The setting was a high-class casino in northern France and the game was baccarat.
The rest is history, at least as far as Fleming’s creation was concerned. He went on to feature in the longest-running movie franchise of all time. As for the game, however – well, in a way, Casino Royale marked both thebeginning and the end for baccarat. While it was a last hurrah for the stuffy chemin de fer preferred by Fleming, the game would rise from the ashes in the internet age. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a look at how Fleming’s seminal novel fits into the broader history of baccarat.
Early days
Card games do not suddenly flash into existence and they don’t have release dates like modern electronic games. They gradually appear, and one day, you suddenly notice that people are playing them. In the case of baccarat, that happened in Italy in the 1500s.
The game is based on a story from Etruscan folklore of a virgin whose fate was decided by the casting of a nine-side die. An eight or nine meant she became a priestess but as the numbers got lower, the fate steadily worsened. Baccara is Italian for zero, and it was soon gallicized into baccarat.
Chemin de fer
King Charles VIII adored the game of baccarat and during his reign, in the early 16th century, it evolved towards the chemin de fer variation that would capture Ian Fleming’s imagination more than 400 years later. The French nobility continued to play, even after they no longer officially existed. Gambling was outlawed in the years following the Revolution, but the game of baccarat lived on in secret private gaming rooms.
Chemin de fer means “railway” and the name was adopted in the late 1800s when the railway was a watchword for speed. One player is designated banker and gets to set the wager and the other players choose whether to “go bank.” You can see how this version of baccarat suited Ian Fleming for plot purposes in Casino Royale, even though when it was made into a movie 50 years later, the game was changed to poker!
Punto banco and modern day baccarat
Chemin de fer dramatically fell out of fashion in the 1970s and baccarat looked in danger of disappearing from casinos altogether. However, a version called punto banco had emerged in the Caribbean and is the form of baccarat we mostly see today. It has a following in land based casinos, but most notably, gamblers are flooding to the best US baccarat online sites to play punto banco for real money at online casinos. This form of baccarat is also popular outside the US, with players across Europe and Asia.
It is a simplified version of chemin de fer, and the house takes on the role of both player and banker, with participants at liberty to back either protagonist from the sidelines. Punto banco has given baccarat a new popularity in the 21st century.