My intuition was both right and wrong: the difference is the pay table. When I was asked about the vulnerability of BBJ to card counting by one of California’s largest banking corporations, I told them “not very.” After all, the dealer needs low cards to generate hands with lots of cards, he needs mid-cards to give stiff totals of 15 and 16, and he needs high cards to bust hands. This article covers card counting BBJ in a six-deck shoe game. There are a lot of details to share, so I’ve decided to break up the discussion into the six-deck case and the two-deck case. The payout is then based on the total number of cards in the dealer’s busted hand. The player who makes the BBJ wager wins if the dealer busts. One of the most common blackjack side bets in California card rooms is known as Buster Blackjack (BBJ).
