Do Others Playing the Same Slot or Card Game Influence Your Winning Odds?

A common sight when walking around a casino floor is to see players gathered around a gaming table. A roulette table can comfortably handle many players placing bets at the same time, and a blackjack table can usually accommodate between two and seven players per round. At a poker table, people deliberately gather to showdown against one another, so there are plenty of multiple-player games.

Switching over to the world of online gambling, the same thing can be found. Multiple players can sit in at a digital blackjack or baccarat game, and even online progressive jackpot slots can be played by numerous people at once. Of course, if you visit the latest UK casino sites or the most well-established platforms, you’ll likely find hundreds of different games. But since online casinos have made games far more accessible, popular platforms can see hundreds or even thousands of players logged in at once. So even while gamblers are doing their own thing by playing with their own bankroll, more often than not, there is someone else around being part of that experience. But does having other players around you influence your winning odds compared to playing alone?

A Solo Experience

It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing in a land-based or online casino. Your odds aren’t affected by how many other players are at the same table or spinning the reels on the same networked slot machine.

So if you were playing a game of blackjack between just you and the dealer, or whether you were one of six players at the table, the odds of you striking 21 are just the same. The number of people involved doesn’t change anything in a meaningful way, and the following is a look at why.

Card Games

When you look at a blackjack or baccarat table, you see fixed odds on outcomes. In blackjack, for example, you control only your own hand as a separate event from anyone else’s. The actions of other players in the game don’t affect your long-term odds.

Not even the fact that other players are taking cards from the shoe has a bearing on your individual odds. While you may see a valuable card go to a different player here and there, it’s usually only confirmation bias that makes you notice, particularly if your hand loses.

The action of the other player taking a card didn’t change your odds of getting what you needed. The “indirect influence” of another player’s action is extremely mathematically negligible to the odds of you getting a high-value card, for example.

Table Games

Roulette is a good example of how odds don’t change with more players involved. Again, this is down to the control the casino has over the game and the fixed odds, like there being around a 48% chance (in European roulette) of betting on black and it hitting.

Whether two or two hundred people bet on black, the odds of that outcome won’t fluctuate; you’ll always get paid at the same odds, and the number of players doesn’t influence which pocket the ball will land in.

Slot Machines

Many players can participate in a networked progressive slot, increasing the prize pot until it is finally won by one lucky person. A single casino platform can have a single game that a handful of its customer base may happen to use at the same time. Again, the odds of winning just because multiple players are spinning at the same time do not change.

That’s because of the Random Number Generator (RNG) software, which keeps everything fair and ensures all spins are independent of each other (to avoid hot and cold streaks). Basically, if the odds of making a jackpot are 1 in 25,000,000, because every spin is an independent action, those odds will be the same for every single press of the button.

Players Don’t Matter

When it comes to casino games, the only player that matters is you. It’s your actions that count at the blackjack table, your decisions of which roulette bets to take, that matter. The results aren’t influenced by anyone else, and neither are the odds.

This is also important because it means that there is no need to change the way you play just because of how many other people are there with you. Stick to your game plan and remember that all games are down to random chance, and that the house always has the edge, as it’s their mathematics that determines odds.