Punto Banco Baccarat: A game for living dangerously
Baccarat makes you think of James Bond, doesn’t it? Well, at least it should. When Ian Fleming wrote the daring adventures of his cunning super-spy, he thought of a game that best represented Bond’s flair for living dangerously. In Fleming’s first Bond installment, Casino Royale (penned in 1953), one of the central moments of the novel revolves a game of Baccarat between Bond and Le Chiffre (the diabolical SMERSH operative). When the modern filmic version of Casino Royale was released in 2006 with first-time Bond-man Daniel Craig, the producers decided to use poker instead of Baccarat. We like poker, but we like Baccarat even more and think Fleming was onto something. Baccarat made an appearance in later Bond features, too, including On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, For Your Eyes Only and GoldenEye.