Stanford Wong
John Ferguson (born 1943), known by his pen name, Stanford Wong, is a gambling author best known for his book Professional Blackjack, first published in 1975. Wong's computer program 'Blackjack Analyzer', initially created for personal use, was one of the first pieces of commercially available blackjack odds analyzing software. Wong has appeared on TV multiple times as a blackjack tournament contestant or as a gambling expert. He owns a publishing house, Pi Yee Press, which has published books by other gambling authors including King Yao.
Blackjack
Wing Wong Stanford
Wong began playing blackjack in 1964[1] while teaching finance courses at San Francisco State University and getting his Ph.D in Finance from Stanford University in California. Not content with the teaching life, Wong agreed to be paid a salary of $1 for his last term of teaching at the school in order to not attend faculty meetings and to pursue his gambling career.
Stanford Wong is mostly well known as a gambling author in addition to his public status as one of the great professional gamblers and blackjack pioneer. He was born in 1943 with the as John Ferguson. Wong has made several public appearances in the gambling world such as. Stanford Wong wrote the single best volume for the beginner to intermediate sports bettor (with an emphasis on football). The book teaches the basics of sportsbetting, terminology, understanding odds, and methods to make bets that should win in the long-term. This is an excellent primer on someone who is serious about making money from sports. Stanford Wong Flunks Big-time. By Lisa Yee Apr 1, 2007. 4.3 out of 5 stars 28. Paperback $6.99 $ 6. Get it as soon as Tue, Jul 7. More Buying Choices $0.25 (85 used & new offers) Kindle $3.99 $ 3. Library Binding $14.99 $ 14. Temporarily out of stock.
The term 'wong' (v.) or 'wonging' has come to mean a specific advantage technique in blackjack, which Wong made popular in the 1980s.[citation needed] It involves watching the play of cards in a game without actually wagering your own money, until the count becomes advantageous, and then stepping in and playing only while the count remains in the player's favor, and then stepping out again. 'Wonging' is the reason that some casinos have signs on some blackjack tables saying, 'No Mid-Shoe Entry', meaning that a new player must wait until exactly the first hand after a shuffle to begin playing.
He has reviewed or acted as a consultant for blackjack writers and researchers, including Don Schlesinger and Ian Andersen.
Wong is known to have been the principal operator of a team of advantage players that targeted casino tournaments including Blackjack, Craps and Video Poker in and around Las Vegas. At the beginning of the team's operation Wong was the primary financier providing the travelling expenses and buy in stakes for the other players.[2] The current owner of the Las Vegas Advisor Anthony Curtis was among the members of this team.
Wong is a member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame.
Current Blackjack News
In 1979, Wong began publishing monthly newsletters on the subject of blackjack.[3] These grew into one of the major journals for professional blackjack players, Wong's Current Blackjack News, ranking with Arnold Snyder's Blackjack Forum. As of 2007, Wong's newsletter is published via Wong's official website.
The journal contains information about rules and conditions of blackjack games in casinos in the United States and some other countries.
Website
Stanford Wong's BJ21 has been online since 1997. It contains a free area and a restricted, subscribers-only area, called Green Chip. Every month, one message from the restricted area is selected by Wong as Post of the Month and its author wins a prize of $100.[4]
Stanford Wong Blackjack
The record holder for most Post of the Month awards won is the blackjack expert known as MathProf, with a total of 16 wins.[5]
Craps
Wong wrote Wong on Dice which purports to show how the game of casinocraps can be beaten through controlled dice throwing. Many blackjack experts are skeptical of Wong's craps claims, and this is a hotly disputed issue—unlike card counting in blackjack, which can be mathematically proven. Wong himself was initially skeptical of the proposition that dice can be controlled in craps.
Personal life
The name 'Stanford Wong' is a pseudonym; the author's real name is John Ferguson. His first choice for a pen name was 'Nevada Smith,' but that name had been taken. 'Stanford Wong' was selected by a friend in the PhD program by taking his alma mater as his first name and an Asian last name to provide the 'mystique of the Orient'.[6][7]
Wong resides in La Jolla, California with his wife. They have two grown children who are both college graduates and married. Wong's company Pi Yee Press is now based in Las Vegas.[8]
Books
- Professional Blackjack (1975)
- Professional Video Poker
- Wong on Dice (2006). Pi Yee Press (pdf). ISBN0-935926-26-7
- Blackjack Secrets
- Basic Blackjack (1992). Pi Yee Press, ISBN0-935926-19-4
- Tournament Blackjack
- Tournament Craps
- Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing your T
- Optimal Strategy for Pai Gow Poker
- Vegas Downtown Blackjack
- Sharp Sports Betting
- Casino Tournament Strategy
- Betting Cheap Claimers
- Winning Without Counting
- Complete Idiot's Guide to Gambling Like a Pro
Notes
- ^BlackjackInfo.com Interview with Stanford Wong
- ^'ThePOGG Interviews - Anthony Curtis - Owner of the Las Vegas Advisor'. Retrieved 5 April 2014.
- ^Basic Blackjack, p. 4
- ^Green Chip information BJ21.com Archived 2011-10-27 at the Wayback Machine
- ^'Post of the Month wins $100 for MathProf' BJ21.com, 2 July 2011 Archived 25 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^Cooper, Marc (29 August 2007). 'Gambling on the spread: sports betting Las Vegas-style'. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 28 September 2009.
- ^Bourie, Steve. 'Meet Stanford Wong - The 'Guru' of Blackjack'. American Casino Guide. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
- ^'Stanford Wong Biography'. BJ21.com. Archived from the original on 2007-06-26.
References
- Stanford Wong (1992). Basic Blackjack. Pi Yee Press. ISBN0-935926-19-4.
External links
- 'Blackjacked - Card counters decry casinos' rough tactics' by Bob Shemeligian, Las Vegas Mercury, October 16, 2003
John Ferguson (or Stanford Wong, as the gambling community has come to know him), is one of the most famous professional blackjack players and strategy authors of our time. He’s authored over a dozen texts on gambling strategy, pioneered the analytical blackjack software industry, and runs a monthly online newsletter to this day. His myriad accomplishments in the gambling world earned him an induction to the Blackjack Hall of fame in its debut year, 2002.
From Tic-Tac-Toe Expert to Blackjack Master
John Ferguson was born in Georgia in 1943 into a somewhat nomadic family. After moving from one place to the next on several occasion, he ended up in Beaverton, Oregon, where he grew up catering to a love for solving puzzles.
Jig-saws, tavern puzzles, Rubik’s cube; the game did not matter. If there was an advantage or algorithm to be utilized in solving it, John was fascinated. One of his earliest achievements was figuring out the proper strategy for winning at Tic-Tac-Toe, regardless of player position.
Gambling was far from his mind at that time. After graduating high school, John attended Oregon State University where he worked diligently to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and a Master’s in Business Administration. Afterwards, he took on a role as a Professor of Mathematics at OSU for two years, but soon became bored with it, choosing to enter the military instead. That lasted two more years, including one year in Vietnam.
Upon returning to the States, John decided to go back to school. He attended Stanford University as a graduate student where he eventually received his PhD in Finance. Along the way, he was also teaching finance courses at the university. It was during this time that his interest in blackjack was first piqued.
Having a natural talent for discovering strategic advantages, John was able to earn a great deal of money playing blackjack, which made up the majority of his income. He studied Edward Thorp’s strategy guide, Beat the Dealer; the first book to teach the fundamentals of card counting.
Ferguson had become so infatuated with blackjack at that point that he once more became bored with his teaching job—so bored, in fact, that he agreed to a salary of just $1 throughout his final term to avoid attending faculty meetings.
Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time Summary
Applying what he’d learned from thorp, along with his own advanced techniques, he began working on a book of his own.
Stanford Wong, the Author
Before publishing his famous manuscript, Professional Blackjack, John Ferguson considered the ramifications it could have on his experience at casinos. As such, he decided to author the book under a pseudonym. He first considered the pen name “Nevada Smith”, but he wasn’t the first to think of it. So instead, on the advice of a friend in the PhD program, he came up with the name “Stanford Wong”; ‘Stanford’ for its superior collegiate reference to his alma mater, and ‘Wong’ because it carried the “mystique of the Orient”.
Professional Blackjack hit book shelves in 1975. Not only is it still in print, Wong’s first book is considered a best seller among blackjack strategy guides to this day.
In 1979, Stanford accomplished another editorial genius when he started up a monthly newsletter called Current Blackjack News. It wasn’t long before his regular publications became just as popular among the professional blackjack community as fellow future Blackjack Hall of Famer Arnold Snyder’sBlackjack Forum.
As of 2007, Wong continues to publish his monthly publication online via BJ21.com.
Gambling Guides by Stanford Wong
Wong has authored and co-authored more than a dozen gambling strategies over the years.
– Professional Blackjack (1975)
– Vegas Downtown Blackjack (1976)
– Winning Without Counting (1978)
– Blackjack in Asia (1979)
– Tournament Blackjack (1987)
– Tournament Craps (1987)
– Professional Video Poker (1988)
– Optimal Strategy for Pai Gow Poker (1990)
– Basic Blackjack (1992)
– Betting Cheap Claimers (1992)
– Casino Tournament Strategy (1992)
– Blackjack Secrets (1993)
– Complete Idiot’s Guide to Gambling Like a Pro (1996; 4E 2005)
– Sharp Sports Betting (2001)
– Wong on Dice (2005)
Wong’s success as a novelist and journalist led him to establish his own publishing company, Pi Yee Press, which now handles all of Wong’s publications as well as the publications of other gambling related materials by authors like Bryce Carlson, Bob Nersesian and King Yao.
Stanford’s Mysterious Blackjack Tournament Team
Professional Blackjack Stanford Wong
In December 1985, Stanford quietly formed a team of skilled players to compete in blackjack, craps, keno and handicapping tournaments. The team consisted of 6 players – 5 men (including himself) and 1 woman. Having already found ultimate success at the blackjack tables, Wong was acquiesce to funding the initial bankroll out of his own pocket.
Compared to typical blackjack teams that spend hours upon hours, day after day, week after week grinding the felt, his tournament team was a phenomenal success. By applying their skills to tournaments only, they were able to bankroll hundreds of thousands of dollars with minimal time and effort involved.
According to Arnold Snyder, who detailed the team’s accomplishments in the March 1987 edition of Blackjack Forum, “the six members of this team had taken no less than eight major tournament prizes,” raking in well over $200,000 along the way. Snyder described Wong’s tournament team as “one of the most successful legal team gambling ventures in history.”
Stanford Wong, the Computer Geek
Like most men of superior intelligence, Stanford was a mastermind when it came to computer technology. He developed the very first blackjack evaluation software, Blackjack Analyzer. Originally intended for personal use, the program was so successful that he eventually released the Windows-based software onto the market.
Blackjack Analyzer allows its users to hand-pick all of the specific rules of a game and sets forth a basic strategy according to those rules. The user can then practice their strategy by playing the game. Instead of giving direct assistance in incorporating proper strategy, the user is able to toggle on/off an alert system that identifies when the player is deviating from appropriate decisions.
Stanford Wong Video Poker
Wong later devised a new program, Blackjack Count Analyzer, which offers the same performance as its predecessor, but with the added benefit of counting cards.