Stanford Wong

Stanford Wong

Stanford Wong self-published his first book, Professional Blackjack, in 1975. It was later published by the Gambler’s Book Club in Las Vegas, then revised and expanded numerous times and published by Wong’s own company, Pi Yee Press.

Wong is widely regarded as one of the most creative developers and sharpest analysts of systems and methods for beating the casinos. In Professional Blackjack, he described a never-before-revealed table-hopping style of playing shoe games, a method of play now known as “wonging.” Professional Blackjack had a profound impact on serious players because it provided card counters with an easy yet powerful method for attacking the abundant 4-deck shoe games that had taken over Las Vegas. Many pros still think of card counting opportunities as “pre-Wong” and “post-Wong.”

In his second book, Blackjack in Asia—a book priced at $2,000 and one of the rarest gambling books sought by collectors today—Wong discussed the unique blackjack games he had discovered in Asian casinos as a professional player, along with the optimum strategies he had devised for beating them. The book also included underground advice for exchanging currencies in these countries on the black market; as well as an account of his own hassles with customs officials when he attempted to leave the Philippines with his winnings. This book reveals more of Wong’s anti-establishment personality than any of his later books.

In 1980, Wong published Winning Without Counting, originally priced at $200, and again, this book is a collector’s item. He not only discusses many hole card techniques that had never before been mentioned in print—front-loading, spooking, and warp play—but he also delved into many clearly illegal methods of getting an edge over the house, including various techniques of bet-capping, card switching, card mucking, etc. He was widely criticized (by those in the casino industry) for the amusing way in which he discussed and analyzed such techniques, but anyone with half a brain could see that he was merely informing players with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.

Wong subsequently published: Tournament Blackjack (1987); Basic Blackjack (1992); Casino Tournament Strategy (1992); Blackjack Secrets (1993); and since 1979 has published various newsletters including Current Blackjack News, aimed at serious and professional players. In addition to writing about blackjack, he has written other gambling books on subjects as diverse as horse racing and video poker.

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