Blackjack and wonging: a story of success
Stanford Wong became famous with his book Professional Blackjack. Wong had a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, hence his pseudonym. As four-deck shoes were the most widely available games in Las Vegas by that time, this original approach was brilliant. The casinos looked for card counters by watching for their betting spreads. It had never occurred to the casinos that a counter might be watching a table from the aisles, waiting for an advantageous count before jumping in to bet.
The counting system Wong published was the Hi-Lo Count, and like Revere’s count, used the easy divide-by-remaining-deck(s) approach to running count adjustments. Wong’s table-hopping approach to shoe games was in many ways similar to Al Francesco’s Big Player (BP) team approach, but allowed a solo card counter to attack shoe games invisibly, and without a team of spotters. This playing style has since become widely known as wonging.