[VORP]

Yea, I wondered about this too when I lived in CA a few years ago. I looked around online but couldn't find any info on beating the game or if it's beatable. One thing is that, at least where I played in Socal, the rules were far different than regular BJ. I'm guessing it was to level the playing field between "house" and player, but I don't know.

Somewhat related, Stanford Wong (from BJ counting fame) has written a book about how to beat CA style Pai Gow. It basically centers around playing perfect strategy and being the banker as often as possible. So you might want to look into that.