Along with poker, blackjack is the world’s most popular casino card game. You can enjoy this game both in traditional and online casinos.

The objective of Blackjack is the same both in traditional and online casinos. The final goal is to beat the dealer by having a the higher hand, without exceeding 21.

Many gamblers fall into the temptation of competing with other gamblers on the same table (even playing online), generating a lack of concentration which may lead to missing great winning opportunities.

The interesting thing in the game of blackjack is that you must place your bet before receiving any cards. This generates an adrenaline and a thrill of anticipation that few games offer. It is worth noticing that this thrill also affects those who choose to play blackjack online as well.

The advantage of playing blackjack online is that you can gamble from home and play with people from all around the world. You will also notice that amount of money you can earn online is way bigger than the one you can make in a traditional casino. This is because there are more people gambling online than playing on traditional gambling houses.

Stanford Wong is the nickname of the successful professional blackjack player John Ferguson, who was born in 1943 in Georgia, USA. At 12 years he began with the earning calculation and probabilities of blackjack, a real advance for his young age, although it was still too early to put it
into practice.
Wong graduated at Stanford University with a doctorate in statistics and finance. There is an interesting anecdote that says that his first nickname was “Nevada Smith” but knowing that another writer already used this name he decided to change it to “Stanford Wong” based on an Asian surname and on the university where studied. In addition to playing blackjack professionally, he dedicated to write books on the subject. In
1975, he published his first book “Professional BlackJack”, a book that still can be found in libraries around the world.
The term “wong” or “wonging” was a word taken by the players blackjack as synonymous for a blackjack technique in the decade of 80. This technique involved observing the game without risking money, without participating, until they prove that it was advantageous to start counting
cards, and then they bet. Due to the use of this technique some casinos stopped allowing the entry in the middle of a game already started.
In addition to his books and his achievements as a player, Wong has worked with well-known blackjack writers like Don Schlesinger and Ian Andersen and is one of the twelve members of the “Salon of the fame of blackjack”. Another important detail of his career is that he has been the
creator of the first software that analyzes blackjack hands, the “Blackjack Analyzer.”

After Thorp designed in 1962 a system of counting letters known as “High and low,” there was additional work that was done by one of the forgotten characters of blackjack, Harvey Dubner. This man was the one who invented the system of counting blackjack points. That system then lead to the publication of over a hundred books with theories and systems for winning at blackjack, blackjack teams were formed, computer systems and methods of mixed tracking.
But if what Dubner did was so important, why is that it has not been recognized?. The truth is that by 1962 Thorp had already published the first edition of “Beat the Dealer”, but the public was avid for blackjack system much more simple, one that everyone could implement without mathematical knowledge. The following year in Las Vegas the Computation Conference was lead out, an event in which the organizers decided to include a panel on “The Use of computers in gambling.” There Thorp was the chairman of the panel and invited Dubner to participate with the description of his method of counting points High / Low.
The following year Thorp published the second edition of his book, where he decided to include this blackjack system by Harvey Dubner. It may be recalled that the method of counting points High / Low is currently used by the vast majority of players that use some blackjack system, including the online blackjack. This happens thanks to the simplicity and practicality of the system introduced by Dubner and then popularized by Thorp.

All arise from an article published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, in 1956. There, four men (Baldwin, Cantey, Maisel and McDermott) developed a system or basic strategy that served to obtain positive results in the long term in the game of blackjack.
The truth is that at that time this article didn’t have much impact, as it had been published in a technical paper that few certainly accessed. The only one who read the article was Dr. Edward O. Thorp, and he did it with great enthusiasm, because it occurred immediately to add a count of letters that, if it was used correctly, it would give him an edge over the players home.
That initial count that occurred to Thorp was of five letters, later he would come up with counting ten letters, which led to write his book “Beat the Dealer” in 1962, which was the blackjack book that sold more in the history of the game. This book had it all, the alternative count of aces, the use of counting points as a guide to bet, counting of ups and downs (from the second edition). This book was the one that convinced people that the blackjack game is statistic and that you can have a system to win.
Ultimately we could say that Thorp’s “Beat the Dealer” changed the history of blackjack. From the edition of this book, the game of blackjack has become one of the most popular games. On the other hand, casinos had to take certain measures against counting cards. Also has led to changes in the counting letter systems so that everyone can use it without complications and with amazing efficiency.
This great popularity of the game of blackjack can be seen today reflected in the success of the sites that offer online play. Increasingly more fans overturn this modality that it is growing every day

Professor Edward Oakley Thorp is regarded to be the inventor of the technique of counting cards to win at blackjack. Thorp made a Master in Physics and a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), then began to teach mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Shortly after he started teaching classes of Quantitative Finance.
On one occasion he accesses a newspaper of statistics to study the causes of the game of blackjack in a systematic way. That’s when he designs a system that explains the variations of the game, and based on this you can reverse the advantage of the casino for the player, increasing the likelihood of winning at blackjack from counting cards.
Then Thorp will easily reach a great success with his books, which allowed him to begin to accumulate a considerable fortune. With “Beat the Dealer”, published in 1962, he gets an incredible impact. The book becomes a classic on the counting of cards and the best techniques for winning at blackjack. In 1966 he published the second edition of this book, with an explanation of the technique much more practiced for readers. Then he ignored the techniques for winning at blackjack and focused his studies toward the stock market. In 1967 he published “Beat the Market”.Known as the “Einstein of blackjack”, this man was one of the first seven men who entered the Salon of Fame of Blackjack. His books were a great success and brought a lot of influence on the players around the world, avid to win blackjack that applied their techniques at every casino that was possible. Even today they continue to apply them even at online casinos.