John Ferguson is a well-known author who writes under the pen name Stanford Wong and has produced a range of novels that are linked to gambling. He is better recognized by his pen name. Professional Blackjack is the book that has been the most successful to this point, but he has also written numerous other books that have been very well received.
He didn’t only write about blackjack; in addition to that, Stanford Wong was an avid player of the game. Over the course of his career, he was able to amass tens of thousands of dollars in winnings from various casinos because to the myriad of one-of-a-kind card counting tactics that he developed. You are welcome to read his entire biography if you are interested in finding out more information about the books he has written, the strategies he has created, and the reasons why he was admitted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame.
A time prior to “Stanford Wong”
Despite the fact that John was born in the state of Georgia in 1943, he does not regard that state to be the location of his hometown. When he was a child, they uprooted themselves and moved about quite a bit since neither of his parents could keep a job for more than a few months at a time. When John was getting ready to enter kindergarten, the family had last but not least found a permanent home in Beaverton, Oregon. As soon as John’s instructor showed the class how to play tic-tac-toe, he became completely preoccupied with devising a method that would allow him to triumph over his other students. John was quite proud of the fact that no one in his class, including the instructor, could defeat him at a game of tic-tac-toe. This included the fact that John could beat the teacher.
John was a very competitive person who would get quite irritated if he didn’t come out on top. Even though he lost every game they played, he always looked forward to family game night. He liked getting together with his pals to play card games, but in order to guarantee victory, he would meticulously analyze every facet of the game in advance. Blackjack was something that one of his pals taught him to play when he was only twelve years old. He did not waste any time and began analyzing the odds right away in order to determine which hands had the highest chance of winning against the dealer.
By the time John was fourteen years old, he was under the impression that he had perfected a fundamental technique for the game of blackjack that nearly ensured he would come out on top. Since he was sure of his blackjack playing skills, he yearned to travel to a casino and test out his strategies there, but he had to wait many years before he could legally do so.
John did not try to go around the casino security by obtaining a phony identification card or figuring out another method to get through them, as some other individuals may have done. Instead, he decided to educate himself on the topic by reading as many books as possible, one of which was titled Beat the Dealer and was written by Edward O. Thorp. Before he ever stepped foot in a casino, he was determined to become as knowledgeable as possible about blackjack and the many tactics that include counting cards.
John made the decision to focus all of his time, effort, and attention on his studies since he was still going to be quite a few years away from being twenty-one. He was the best student in almost all of his required subjects and ultimately earned the highest grade point average. He was offered a significant scholarship to attend Oregon State University, which he gladly accepted and went on to get a degree there.
When John turned twenty-one, he finally reached the age when he was allowed to join casinos without having to worry about breaking any laws. John and many of his classmates and buddies from school went on a trip to Reno so that they could experience their first casino together. John made the decision to count cards using Thorp’s 10-count approach at the tables because, after doing extensive study on a variety of various card counting tactics, he found that system to be the most accurate.