Scoreboard patterns are a trap

Baccarat tables display "roads" — scoreboards showing the history of Banker/Player/Tie results. Big Road, Bead Plate, Big Eye Boy, Small Road, Cockroach Pig. Players obsess over these patterns. They're meaningless. Every hand is independent. An 8-card shoe has a fixed composition, but the drawing rules make each hand's outcome unaffected by the previous one in any way that matters to a bettor. A streak of Banker wins does NOT make Player "due." A long pattern breaking does NOT change the next hand's probability. The roads exist because baccarat players WANT them to. Casinos happily provide them. They help kill time between hands and make players feel like they have an edge. They don't. What actually matters: 1. Bet Banker (1.06% edge) 2. Track hours played, not patterns 3. Set a bankroll limit 4. Quit when ahead — sessions are variance, not skill The baccarat grind: at $25 Banker bets for 4 hours at 72 hands/hour, you're expected to lose about $19/hour ($25 × 72 × 1.06% edge). That's cheap casino entertainment — just don't fool yourself into thinking you're "reading" the shoe.