Blackjack seems to be in the news these days. Movies about casino games like Blackjack seem to be doing quite well at the box office, and we are not sure why. It is also quite easy to pick up a paper and read about one lucky bloke who won a few million quid at one Blackjack tournament or the other.

Card Counting is a skill that is used by many professional blackjack players and it is one that can be altered to suit each player. There are different strategies that can be used for counting cards at blackjack, including beginner strategies like Red Sevens, Hi-Lo, and Knock Out Blackjack strategies. Best Professional Blackjack Players Not all those who play blackjack become members of Blackjack Hall of Fame and are considered to be the best blackjack players. There are a lot of people, who have unusual and interesting fortune, which referred them in one way or another to blackjack game and gambling in general.

Given the above, some folks are inevitably starting to think about getting ahold of some serious moolah by playing Blackjack professionally. But the question that bears asking is if that is an achievable goal. The answer thankfully appears to be yes.

1. The Professional Blackjack Table is a top-of-the line casino style table. This blackjack table can be customized according to your exact needs. Features: Made of oak wood; Removable padded armrest; Padded digital layout; Built in metal chip tray and money slot; Metal cup holders Wood insert on surface; Storage area behind table.
2. Click chips from your bank to move them onto the table and make your bet. Click chips on the table to take them back. Click Deal, and the dealer will toss you two cards. Options to Hit, Stand.

However, the reality of being a professional player is quite often not as fun and glamorous as is frequently portrayed in movies and books. Professional Blackjack players do not have it easy since casinos are constantly trying to throw them off-balance by either changing gameplay rules or simply banning them altogether.

Being a professional Blackjack player also means lots of travelling for one game or the other. And unless the player is really good and playing at a top-level, the profits realised from the gameplay will be as small as sin!

Are there readers who still want to be a professional Blackjack player? Well then, they can keep reading as we detail why and why not they should take the professional route.

Woe Is the Professional Blackjack Player

There are several persuasive reasons why becoming a professional Blackjack player does not make sense. One such reason is money troubles, while another is big-time stress.

• Money Troubles

  – The reality is that making money, even as a professional Blackjack player is tough. The main reason for this is that the house edge in Blackjack is so small that the player needs to bet huge amounts just to stand a chance of walking away with something worthwhile.

During Blackjack gameplay, the pro player must keep an eagle eye out for the house edge. This ceaseless tracking is vital, as it makes it possible for the player to know when the house edge is favourable and to bet accordingly.

As the house edge swings back and forth from the player to the online casino, the player is obliged to bet the highest permissible when the house edge is in his favour and to bet the least permissible when the house edge is favourable to the casino. Betting when the house edge is in the casino’s favour costs the player money, which the player then tries to recover by betting the maximum when he judges that the house edge momentarily favours him.

There are of course things that a pro Blackjack player can do to remedy this situation, like practising back counting. Back counting, for instance, involves standing a little way aside and counting cards during a Blackjack game without making bets.

The back counter then makes heavy bets once he/she judges that the house edge has become favourable. However, an increasing number of online casinos now have mid-shoe entry rules in force that make the practice of back counting impossible.

During Blackjack games, the professional card counter usually strives to reduce the house edge and assure at least a 1% return on all bets. This is however easier said than done. Even when possible, getting a 1% return on all bets is a high-risk activity.

Say, the card counter bets $100 on average and makes 100 such bets per hour. At the end of the hour, he/she would have wagered a cumulative total of $10,000, with the 1% return in bets making for a profit of around $100 per hour.

This might sound like a good deal, but that is not the case. In the example detailed above, the average bet of $100 per hand hides the fact that the player would be obliged to make lots of $30 and $50 bets when the card count is not favourable and $400 bets when the count becomes favourable.

Now, most Blackjack tables support high and low betting limits that are well within such a bet range. However, such a big bet spread serves as a good indication to the casino concerned that the player is Card Counting.

The player will, therefore, need to be fast and stealthy before ultimately getting discovered and thrown out. Ultimately, the player might end up getting thrown out of a lot of nearby casinos, which will make it necessary to travel to far casinos and play at these. Such travel can be quite stressful, to the player’s mental health, and his family and acquaintances.

• The Stress Effect

  – Due to the massive amount of stress and tension that nearly all Blackjack players are daily subjected to, it would be best for most folks to just work a day job and treat Blackjack as a diverting hobby.

A Professional Blackjack Player

Despite the above, there are still some persuasive reasons why playing professional Blackjack can be the best thing in the world. Not least because professional Blackjack players tend to see themselves as shining knights who stood up to the casinos, beat them silly at their own convoluted game and walked away with lots of bacon for the home front. That feeling of success can be intoxicating.

Then, there is the money angle. When professional Blackjack players know all that they can of the game and have honed their skills to perfection, they can make a great deal of money, especially if they have a top-notch team backing them. When this is the case, folks can opt to play Blackjack games for a living, rather than being in a dead-end and an incredibly boring 9-5 job.

Becoming a professional Blackjack player is not as hard as it has been cracked up to be. All that is needed is to start learning the basics and assiduously practice these. Soon enough, with consistent play will come considerable skill improvement. Learning strategies like card counting is also not as hard as is popularly supposed, which is quite a relief for those looking to go pro.

Going Pro

Now that we have outlined the pros and cons of going pro, are there folks who wish to live out their dreams by becoming a professional Blackjack player? If so, here’s how to get it done.

The very first step to going pro is to understand that Blackjack just like most other casino table games is based on mathematics. As such, a basic knowledge of maths is essential!

Next, the Blackjack rules in place always dictate what the casino house edge will be. There are Blackjack rules that when used results in a higher house edge, while other rules lower the house edge. As such, before jumping into a Blackjack game, whether as a pro or amateur, players should first understand how Blackjack rules influence the house edge and learn to pick out those games with the least possible house edge.

Next, the prospective pro needs to learn the basic strategies of Blackjack. He/she needs to learn these so thoroughly that they become second nature and there is simply no possibility of making a strategy-based mistake during gameplay.

Once the basic strategies have been memorised, card counting needs to be learned. This is important because, card counting, when done properly, moves the house edge to the players’ advantage.

While card counting, the prospective pro Blackjack player should not try to memorise all the cards that have been played so far, as that might be beyond his/her abilities. Instead, a better option would be to track the ratio of good and bad cards and then make bets when this ratio is favourable. This would, of course, be when the number of high cards outnumber those of the low cards.

Once any of the card counting systems in existence have been learned and perfected, the next thing to do is to know when to adjust the gameplay strategy according to the results of the card count. The betting limit should then be adjusted according to the count, though this must be carefully done, else the casino will discern that the player is card counting and kick him out.

To avoid a disgraceful exit from a casino, the player needs to take steps to disguise his actions. This is difficult to pull off but can be done.

Once card counting, basic strategy and the rest have been learned and honed to perfection, the next step to explore making the most of the game like a pro. This is difficult to achieve solo but possible with a committed Blackjack team in place.

There are lots of pros and cons in forming or becoming a member of a professional Blackjack team. On the one hand, casinos find it difficult to detect the team members and their synchronised plays, which leads to greater success. On the other hand, finding committed and expert team members is no walk in the park.

Conclusion

Becoming a professional Blackjack player is no easy feat and can be quite emotionally and physically tasking. It can, however, be very lucrative, with top Blackjack players earning huge.

Readers should, therefore, weigh the risks and rewards and then, decide whether being a pro-level Blackjack player is for them.

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[edit]

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.

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[edit]

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[edit]

Professional Blackjack Stanford Wong

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]

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[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

• 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[edit]

Professional Blackjack Pdf

1. ^BlackjackInfo.com Interview with Stanford Wong
2. ^'ThePOGG Interviews - Anthony Curtis - Owner of the Las Vegas Advisor'. Retrieved 5 April 2014.
3. ^Basic Blackjack, p. 4
4. ^Green Chip information BJ21.com Archived 2011-10-27 at the Wayback Machine
5. ^'Post of the Month wins $100 for MathProf' BJ21.com, 2 July 2011 Archived 25 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine
6. ^Cooper, Marc (29 August 2007). 'Gambling on the spread: sports betting Las Vegas-style'. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 28 September 2009.
7. ^Bourie, Steve. 'Meet Stanford Wong - The 'Guru' of Blackjack'. American Casino Guide. Retrieved 21 October 2010.
8. ^'Stanford Wong Biography'. BJ21.com. Archived from the original on 2007-06-26.

References[edit]

Professional Blackjack Player Reddit

• Stanford Wong (1992). Basic Blackjack. Pi Yee Press. ISBN0-935926-19-4.

Professional Blackjack Table

External links[edit]

• 'Blackjacked - Card counters decry casinos' rough tactics' by Bob Shemeligian, Las Vegas Mercury, October 16, 2003

Blackjack Professional Org