Baccarat comes to VIPER: meet the five Generals

Banker has just won five in a row. The man two seats down pressed every one of them and is sitting behind a stack that was not there ten minutes ago. Your plan says one unit. Everything else in you says follow him.

That is baccarat. The cards are the easy part. The decisions are the game: press or hold, ride or wait, walk or stay. They come every forty seconds, and every one of them is a chance to undo the last hour.

Today VIPER takes those decisions off your hands. Baccarat is now in the app you already use for roulette, and it arrives with five Generals: expert money managers, each with its own temperament, each playing one session from the first hand to a clean finish. A General reads every hand, sizes every bet in whole units, backs off when the table turns cold, sits out a storm entirely, and locks in a gain the moment it has one worth keeping.

The record speaks first. Over 20,000 simulated sessions per General with the ratchet on, Black Tortoise, the most careful of the five, finished 85 sessions in 100 ahead, typically inside 43 hands. Every General on the council finished ahead in at least 64 of 100.

Baccarat is included in your VIPER subscription. Start a session, choose Baccarat on the first step, and the whole app changes game. Only gamble with money you can afford to lose.

Meet the Generals

Five Generals, named for the four guardians of the Chinese sky and the Qilin at their centre. Each one plays a 100-unit session, and you set what a unit is worth. At $5 a unit, that is a $500 session with a $50 to $150 target, depending on the General you pick.

Every figure below is the General's certified card: 20,000 simulated sessions at its default settings with the ratchet on, keeping 50% of the session high. Ahead /100 is how many sessions in a hundred ended above where they started. Typical session is the median number of hands to the finish.

Black Tortoise, the Grinder. The old campaigner. Small, steady Banker bets of 1 to 3 units that press only after a win. Two losses in a row put it on guard; a storm sends it to the sidelines until the table turns. Quick to bank a gain, and the best record on the council.

Azure Dragon, the Regressor. Calm water, deep current. Opens with 3 units, and the moment it wins it drops to 1 so the opening profit is safe. Then it climbs a unit at a time on the casino's money. The fastest finisher of the five.

Golden Qilin, the Shape-Shifter. The strategist. A ladder in normal play, a burst when ahead, Paroli once a gain is banked, a Salami ladder when clouds form and flat single units in a storm. Its biggest bet grows with its profit, and it gets bolder the further ahead it is.

Vermilion Bird, the Pattern Reader. Quick, bright and restless. Follows a streak, plays a chop, otherwise backs Banker. Through a bad patch it climbs in short series and comes down fast when they win. When it is ahead, it strikes with a short doubling burst.

White Tiger, the Striker. All claws. A doubling burst in normal play, a bigger press when ahead, Paroli once a gain is banked. It takes a long losing run to put the Tiger in a storm, and it comes back quickly. The largest target on the council.

Whatever their temperament, all five play by the same rules of engagement, and they are the rules you have always promised yourself:

• No session opens above 3 units.
• The stop loss is always on. There is no setting to remove it, and no bet is ever sized so that losing it would carry the session past it.
• Every bet is exact. Whole units, placed as asked. If a bet is skipped or changed, the General closes its session rather than play off its card.

That is bankroll protection with no willpower required. The software keeps the promise for you.

They read the weather

Every General reads the sky. After each hand it judges its own session from its results, its recent form and how far it sits below its session high, and the General's Weather card under the bet bar tells you what it sees:

• Sunny: ahead, near its session high and in good form.
• Clear: fair weather, nothing to report.
• Cloudy: on guard after a few losses.
• Black cloud: a storm.
• Banked: the ratchet is on and a gain is locked in.

A worse sky registers at once. Clearing takes a few decided hands in a row with no sign of trouble, so a General never rushes back into a cold shoe.

When a black cloud rolls in, the Darkness meter shows how deep the storm runs, from 0 to 100, and each General takes cover its own way: smaller bets, a switch of side, or a full sit-out. Sitting out means staking nothing and counting the hands it would have won. The darker the storm, the more of those virtual wins it waits for before it comes back.

Sitting out a bad patch is the discipline every player swears by and almost nobody keeps once the chips are in front of them. Now a General keeps it for you, and the Strategy Watch board shows you what the other strategies would have done with the same hands while it waited.

The ratchet: keep what the session made

This is the feature behind the numbers in the table. Every General has a ratchet. Once the session is up by the General's switch-on point, a floor rises to the share of the session high you choose, anywhere from 10% to 90%, and never falls. If the table turns, the session ends on the floor with that gain in your pocket, and the window reads Profit Locked In. While the floor holds, the weather reads Banked.

Each General switches on at its own point: +3 units for Black Tortoise, +6 for Azure Dragon and Golden Qilin, +10 for Vermilion Bird, +18 for White Tiger. Once it has switched on, that session cannot end in the red. That is why 85 of Black Tortoise's 100 sessions finished ahead: 7 ran all the way to the take profit, and 78 locked a gain on the way.

The keep slider is yours. Set it low and more sessions run on to the full target. Set it high and nearly every winning session banks early. Your choice is remembered for each General.

A table built for baccarat

Choose Baccarat on the first step of Session Setup and the whole window changes game. It takes on Imperial Jade, deep lacquer, gold and jade, and the familiar neon is back the moment you start a roulette session.

• The Bead Road replaces the number strip: every hand, ties included, six to a column, the latest bead outlined. Fold it to a single line that still counts the hands.
• The board replaces the wheel layout: PLAYER, TIE and BANKER, with the Live bet sitting as a chip on its spot. Click a spot to record the hand, or press P, B or T.
• The Big Road runs under the board exactly as the casino draws it: each streak down its own column, a new column when the winner changes, dragon tails and all.
• UNDO takes back a whole hand. Balance, bet, every strategy's position and the board go back one hand together, so a mis-entered result costs you nothing.
• BATCH types in a shoe you have been watching, newest first, up to 500 hands. NEW SHOE marks the dealer's fresh shoe.
• Lightning reads the winner from the casino's result banner. When a read is not certain it never guesses: a Player, Tie, Banker pad opens and you confirm with one click.
• AutoBET places the Live bet through a baccarat layout with Player, Tie and Banker spots, plus a CONFIRM button if your table wants one pressed after the chips go down.

One strategy bets. The rest watch.

In a baccarat session exactly one strategy is Live and bets your money. Leave Watch the other strategies on at setup and the rest play every hand on paper beside it: their own side, their own stake, their own books, nothing at risk. The Strategy Watch board ranks them by result and shows each one's next bet, its last ten hands, a trend line, its low point and its win-loss-push record, for the whole session or for this shoe alone.

When a Watching strategy is running hot, press Switch To and it takes over after the hand on the table settles. Sit Out And Watch rests your money while every strategy keeps playing on paper. And when a General finishes its session, the choice is yours: run it again with the same settings, switch to another strategy, stop, or keep watching.

Four Classics and four money engines

Prefer to pick the side yourself? VIPER also ships four Classics: Follow The Banker, Follow The Shoe, Chop (bet against the last winner) and Yin Yang (back the side that trails over the recent hands, or the side that leads). Each one hands its stake to a money engine of your choice: Still Water (flat), Abacus (the stake that gives the run its best chance of reaching its target before its stop), Rising Kite (open bigger, bank the first win, climb a unit a win) or Bamboo Ladder (a recovery ladder that climbs back after a loss). Rising Kite and Bamboo Ladder come in Gentle, Standard and Bold.

The engine changes the shape of the night. Measured on 500 sessions of at most 60 hands, Follow The Shoe with Bamboo Ladder at Standard finished 64 sessions in 100 ahead, and 62 of them reached +10 units. Flat Banker, the bet most players make, finished 41 in 100 ahead over the same hands.

The Classics also take Dynamic Play: AutoBET holds the Live bet for your review, and AIM PLAYER or AIM BANKER moves it to your read before you press OK.

Session Complete: the night, in one window

Every session, roulette or baccarat, now ends on the new Session Complete window. It opens the moment the session ends, whether you stopped it, a limit stopped it or a General reached its finish, and it stays until you press Continue. Every number on it comes from the session's own ledger.

• The verdict: Finished Ahead, Finished Behind or Broke Even, with the net in money, in units and as a share of your bankroll.
• The ride: Started, Ended, Session High, Session Low, and the balance hand by hand with your target and stop lines.
• The General: how it ended (Target Reached, Profit Locked In, Stop Loss Reached), its weather at the close, and its own P/L against its target.
• Hands and Money: bets placed, hands sat out, won-lost-push, win rate, total wagered, biggest win, biggest loss, best run, worst run.
• The shoe: how many Banker, Player and Tie hands came out. In roulette, red, black and zero.
• Strategies: the Live strategy first, then every Watching strategy with its record on the same hands. One glance tells you which General would have had the better night.
• Building Plan: the milestone you reached, or how close you are to the next one, when bankroll tracking is on.

Before you sit down

Three things to know before you choose a General:

• A locked gain is often a modest one. With the ratchet on, Black Tortoise's average winning session was +3.5 units, while a losing session still costs about the full stop loss of 30 units. Across the council, one losing session undoes between 2.5 and 8.4 winning ones. Set the keep slider with that in mind: a lower keep lets more sessions run on to the full target.
• Let it finish. A General plays to its own finish, typically 38 to 177 hands depending on the General. If you stop early, the result is wherever it stands, and the card no longer describes it.
• It needs a 5% commission table. The card was measured at 5%, so a General does not play at another rate. The Classics play at any rate. And the commission is the house's edge: about 1.06% on Banker, 1.24% on Player. Nothing changes that. What VIPER changes is how much you bet, how long you stay, and whether you leave while you are ahead.

Take your seat

Five Generals with measured records and a stop loss that cannot be switched off. Weather that shows you when they are hiding from a storm. A ratchet that keeps what a good session made. Every other strategy playing on paper beside the one that bets. And a Session Complete window that tells you the truth about the night. All of it in the app you already own, one game change away from your roulette strategies.

Update to the latest build, start a session, and pick Baccarat.

— Team Viper