The player next to you keeps standing on 12 and hitting 17. It feels like it costs you. We simulated 200,000 shoes to find out whether it does.
No. Not in any way you will ever notice.
We ran 200,000 shoes through our table simulator, seven seats, six decks, seventy five percent penetration. Once with every other seat playing perfect basic strategy. Once with every other seat playing badly in the specific ways people actually play badly.
Your win rate across those two conditions: 42.38 percent against 42.40 percent. A difference of 0.02 percentage points, with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.09. That is not a small effect. That is no effect at all, sitting comfortably inside the noise.
The player standing on 12 against a dealer 6 is costing themselves money. They are not costing you any.
The complaint is always the same. Someone at third base hits when they should stand, takes the card that would have busted the dealer, and the table groans.
That story only works if you look at one hand. Over many hands the card they took was equally likely to have helped the dealer as hurt them, and the same is true of the card they left behind. The deck does not know who is sitting where. Every card that reaches the dealer is drawn from the same unseen distribution regardless of how many were pulled before it.
The reason this feels wrong is that you only remember the times it went badly. Nobody remembers the hand where the bad player took a card that would have given the dealer twenty one.
Two things, and neither is your win rate.
The depletion point is the one place a genuine exception hides. At very low deck counts with deep penetration, cards used differently do change what remains. If you are counting cards, that matters. If you are playing basic strategy, it does not.
The rules of the table. Whether the dealer hits soft 17, whether you can double after splitting, whether blackjack pays three to two or six to five. Those change your expected return by real amounts, in some cases more than a full percentage point.
Your own decisions. Basic strategy takes the house edge down to around half a percent. Playing by instinct gives most of that back.
Neither of those has anything to do with the person sitting next to you.
| What we measured | All seats optimal | All others playing badly | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your win rate | 42.38 percent | 42.40 percent | 0.02 points, inside the margin of error |
| Rounds per shoe | 11.29 | 11.21 | 0.08 rounds |
| Effect on your expected return | Baseline | Not distinguishable from baseline | None measurable |
| Effect on hands played per hour | Baseline | Slightly fewer | Small, from slower play |
Margin of error on the win rate difference was plus or minus 0.09 percentage points at 95 percent confidence.
No. The card they take was as likely to have helped the dealer as hurt them. Across many hands it evens out completely. Our simulation found a difference of 0.02 percentage points, which is inside the margin of error.
You will play more hands per hour, which means more exposure to the house edge, not less. Your return per hand is the same either way.
For a card counter, how cards are consumed does matter, because the count depends on what has been seen. For a basic strategy player it makes no measurable difference.
Verified against 2 primary sources. Last reviewed September 10, 2026.