at midi or grand Bacc (which grand Bacc. is getting very rare, saw it at Caesar's in March 2019, while walking through the last time I was there, they don't seem to have grand Bacc. at Wynn/Encore/Cosmo even the special limit players in the back rooms at Wynn/Encore I saw playing at midi tables only), but anyway - yes, midi Bacc. means you may touch the cards.

There is currently one table at Cosmo that appears to alternate between being designated a mini (may not touch the cards) and midi. The table looks the same on the outside, its designation just depends on the day and shift.

BACK THEN:
As far as HOW FAR you are able to go with the "touching," in the old days in Vegas and Tahoe when I played fifteen years or so ago, they allowed most everything except tearing the cards in half (which, some people even did that, and it depended on the pit boss if he was going to step in to stop that action or not), but in general, you could bend, poke holes in (looking for the dots), crumple, whatever the cards.

The general rule back then in Vegas and Tahoe was that as long as the card was still readable to the crew and camera, you could do whatever.

Back then on one big hand my buddy who was with me and I had a pre-designated shtick routine where I already knew what I had and then tore the corner off the card and handed it to my friend, he put it in his mouth, and said, "Mmm, tastes like a nine." At that point the pit boss stepped in and said, "Okay! that's enough." but it was as much about how he was tired of that I'd been winning ceaselessly for close to two weeks on that trip, as about tearing off a piece of the card.

Another time in Tahoe the pit boss told me I could touch the cards but asked me not to bend them so that they could put them back in for another round of play, because there was another set of players at the table whom she said, "Don't want to wait" for brand new cards on each shuffle. I was by far the bigger player at the table that day, but I accommodated them. Nowadays most casinos don't pitch cards even in BJ, so this would never be allowed, they'd be too worried a player might notch or somehow mark the Bacc. cards.

NOW:
Bending, mangling, crumpling, all that is still allowed. Nowadays, there are some pit bosses who won't allow you to poke holes in the cards, but they are in the minority. The one pit boss I asked WHY he cared about poking holes claimed that the pen used to poke might go through and poke/damage the table felt, so after that I'd always put the playing card over my score cards before poking so that the pen coming through would hit, at worst, the score card and not the table felt. (A couple of pit bosses that I mentioned to WHY I was doing it that way, came back and told me "I don't care where you poke the cards" so obviously it is a personal pit boss pet peeve and not corporate policy as to whether poking is allowed or not.)

In Bacc. what we players are looking for first as we bend up the cards, are the "sides" (no sides (ace, 2, 3) - two sides (4, 5) - three sides (6, 7, 8) - four sides (9, 10) - and then of course a "line" means face card meaning a 10), and then afterwards the "dots" to determine which of the sided cards it is. When I play I first look quickly to see what combination I have, and if it is a combination of sides that may not possibly add up to 8 or 9 (or at least, 6 or 7), such as say - a two sided card and a three sided card, meaning that at best I have two cards that add up to 3 - then I don't waste time looking much further. As far as poking - I poke holes only if I have two four sided cards, to see if at least one of them has that dot in the middle, meaning then that my hand is at least an 8.

Some players will sit there forever carefully bending up the side and top to figure out that they have two face cards, or some other worthless hand. (i.e. some players will take a long time to look carefully at both cards no matter what they add up to.) I recall one player from a long time ago who would get this look on his face like he was about to perform some heroic feet and then lift his elbows way up at an angle (looking a little like a seated Karate Kid about to perform the crane) before he dove into the cards. When he was "opening" the cards, and my buddy would ask me what I thought he had, I'd say, "I don't know, but I do know that whatever it is, it's going to be dramatic."

Many Asian players are superstitious and think that the way they look, and their blowing away dots or announcing that there must be a dot, actually affect the outcome of the hand. Other players just do it because it is fun and prolongs the mystery of the hand's final outcome.

Last time I was at Encore I watched a special limits high roller in the back room open both sides, Bank and Player, they simply allowed him in deference to his high credit line and high bets to open all cards at his own private table.*** On request, occasionally, in the regular casino the pit boss will allow a player to open both sides too, if no one is betting the opposite side.

For me, I touch/bend/poke the cards because it gives me a better "feel" somehow for how the shoe is progressing. (Each win or loss seems more deliberate when you yourself experience the unfolding of the hand, side and dot by dot.) I like to play at a table where I am the one opening the cards, which nowadays I am not always the big player at the table (the largest bet gets to open that side, Bank or Player) but lately a lot of the players who have gotten to know me are convinced that I am "lucky" and allow me to open the cards for them, or, I just play alone at my own table. My experience is that there are two kinds of Baccarat shoes, random ones and shoes that tend to follow a certain pattern. The random shoes there is no real way to win on, but the pattern shoes for whatever reason follow some sort of discernible pattern, at least for a while, and if you are betting right on them, you will win, or at least I have won, pretty consistently.