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I was at a bingo the other day at Red Rock and it was a pretty small crowd. Does the house edge depend on the crowd size and is it possible to get an edge?
Yes, crowd size can affect the expected value (EV) of playing bingo in games with guaranteed prize pools. Similar to examples we've pointed to where a football contest guarantees a prize total that exceeds the amount of money it takes in (due to a low number of entries), the "equity" for players in the contest can be positive. It works the same in bingo.
Conversely, if there are a lot of players with a fixed pool, the equity can be negative and it becomes more negative as more players enter. If the prize pool increases uniformly as more players enter, then your expected return remains constant, subject to the percentage of the entry fees that are being returned.
Assuming you're playing sessions with guaranteed payouts, basic strategy would call for playing during off-hours and/or tracking which sessions routinely don’t fill seats. This was more viable, and exploited by some, in Las Vegas when more casinos offered bingo.
Another way to get an edge at bingo involves promotional subsidies, such as free cards, matchplays, and bouncebacks. Casinos often hand out free paper or electronic cards, offer points multipliers, food comps, and other perks tied to bingo play. All these can put a player in positive-EV territory. Along these lines, we've calculated the value of our bingo coupon at the Plaza as having an EV of +$6.