Find out about the link between James Bond and his favorite casino game, the French baccarat or Chemin de Fer.
The casino game, baccarat, is one of James Bond’s most recognized attributes along with the gadgets and the “shaken but not stirred” Martini. The charismatic secret agent has been described playing baccarat, or, to be more accurate, the French version of the game called Chemin de Fer, in many of Ian Fleming’s books and their adaptions to the big screen.
The first novel in the James Bond series, Casino Royale, centers around a baccarat game that takes place between the agent 007 and the SMERSH operative, Le Chiffre, in a luxurious casino in France. Here is how Ian Fleming describes James Bond’s attitude towards gambling in the Casino Royale novel from 1953:
Bond has always been a gambler. He loved the dry riffle of the cards and the constant unemphatic drama of the quiet figures round the green tables. He liked the solid, studied comfort of card rooms and casinos, the well padded arms of the chairs, the glass of champagne or whiskey at the elbow, the quiet unhurried attention of good servants. He was amused by the...