New research enabled by RFID-equipped baccarat tables is opening a significant data frontier for casino operators worldwide seeking deeper game insights.
From Las Vegas to Macau, baccarat remains the preferred game for the most lucrative high-rollers and biggest spenders in the global casino industry.
Macau, the world’s largest casino market, generated US$26 billion in combined VIP and mass baccarat revenue in 2025, according to its Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
Slot machine revenue in Macau reached just $1.7 billion over the same period, illustrating just how dominant baccarat is within that market.
On the Las Vegas Strip, baccarat generated $1.4 billion in 2025, nearly matching the combined totals of blackjack, craps and roulette, per the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
Only 24 Strip casinos offered baccarat last year, yet 408 combined baccarat tables kept pace with more than 1,500 tables across those three other games.
Casino companies have historically operated with limited baccarat data compared to slots, but that technology gap is narrowing rapidly with RFID-enabled smart tables.
Last February, all six Macau casino concessionaires announced plans to install RFID technology across gaming tables, primarily to address monetary integrity concerns.
Angel Group has since installed more than 1,100 smart-table systems on baccarat tables at Sands properties throughout the Special Administrative Region.
This emerging data stream is enabling researchers like Dr. Mana Azizsoltani, head of data science for Differential Labs, to conduct more sophisticated baccarat analysis.
Azizsoltani presented new research on baccarat outcomes at UNLV’s International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, drawing significant interest from global casino operators.
“In my opinion, [baccarat] is the most valuable game in the world…It’s all about quantifying risk — that’s what it all boils down to,” Azizsoltani told iGB on the conference sidelines.
His research, titled “Quantifying luck: Determining the probability of baccarat wins given player bet mix,” examines bet patterns and their statistically expected outcomes in detail.
“One of the things that [operators] are interested in is this idea of, ‘How do we quantify how unlucky someone’s gotten?’, and this is kind of the motive of this project,” Azizsoltani said during his presentation.
“The flipside of the coin is, how unusual is the player’s win? So the use case for player development or marketing could be this idea of losses, what is an unusual, improbable loss? But the other side is, what is an unusual, improbable win?” he continued.
Azizsoltani noted that his model can “detect unusual players” with 90% confidence or above within approximately 25 to 50 hands played.
Clearer player-level data benefits marketing teams, surveillance personnel detecting cheating, and regulators monitoring tax collection and anti-money laundering concerns simultaneously.
Side bets represent another critical dimension of the research, accounting for 6% of baccarat handle but approximately 40% of casinos’ theoretical win on average.
“I think there are a lot of different facets of side bets that can be studied, but I think the main ones are the risk associated with them to the casino, the vulnerability, the volatility,” Azizsoltani told iGB.
“And then there’s side bet placement: how many should we put, if we crowd them together, are we going to have less people playing them, what are the ones that are most optimal?” he added.
