Buster Blackjack @ Sycuan, CA
At my nearby Sycuan Casino, they offer a sidebet on some of their games called “Buster Blackjack”. It’s an optional “bonus” bet the player can place, up to the amount of his blackjack bet, and limited to $100. It’s a bet that the dealer will bust, and its paytable is based on the number of cards the dealer busts with.
I wrote a little recursive program to calculate the distribution of dealer busts for a 6-decks shoe, and worked in their paytable.
| Dealer Bust Cards | Payout | Probability | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 2:1 | 1.73032e-01 | 0.346064 |
| 4 | 2:1 | 8.93918e-02 | 0.178784 |
| 5 | 4:1 | 2.04726e-02 | 0.081890 |
| 6 | 12:1 | 2.63760e-03 | 0.031651 |
| 7 | 50:1 | 2.14444e-04 | 0.010722 |
| 8 | 250:1 | 1.15280e-05 | 0.002882 |
| no bust | -1 | 0.714240 | -0.714240 |
| total | 1.000000 | -0.062247 |
So the bet has a typical bonus bet edge of 6.2%. It’s a lot better than I thought it’d be.
Discount Gambling 
I get to play the fine East Coast Stand 17 variety of Span21 and have been very successful as I have gotten backed off only infrequently.
The S17 variant of the game has a radically increased E O R (effect of removal) for the Ace.
OOOPS ! Sorry.
Posted in the wrong place.
I hope that my pithy comment
can be moved to the Spanish 21 thread !
T I A
To see what you are facing with this side bet, or any other side bet go to Wizardofodds.com:
http://wizardofodds.com/blackjack/appendix8.html
Buster Blackjack:
http://wizardofodds.com/blackjack/appendix8.html#busterbj
The House Edge is an extremely bad — 6.21%