When Anthony Curtis turned 21 (in 1979), he moved to Las Vegas almost immediately. Of legal age, he started out as a card counter, coupon hustler, and early advantage player, doing anything "that had been deemed legal by the courts," in his own words. He was lucky to get in with some really good people and wound up being friends with Peter Griffin and Stanford Wong, both of whom had a huge influence on how he honed his abilities, in particular taking advantage of casino mistakes and playing against other players, primarily in tournaments.
Joining Stanford Wong’s tournament team was a defining event in his career. Wong formed his team with three close friends (Ernie Amore, Dave Douglas, and Anne Amster). When he needed a fifth player, he called Anthony. Of course, Anthony leapt at the chance.
One thing few people know about Wong is that he didn’t just write books — he was a player. He was never afraid to back up his ideas with his money. When he formed the team, for example, none of the players could afford the travel and entry fees, so he put them all up. In addition, Wong was a fantastic innovator and Anthony was good at applying in practice what Wong figured in theory.
Tournaments are high-variance and the team was down about $70K when Anthony won the Hilton Matchplay Blackjack tournament for $72K to get even. Wong packed the team into his van the very next morning and drove to Tahoe, where another team member won a crap tournament for $43K.
According to Anthony, "Wong acted like he knew it would happen and I suppose he did. What he was really good at was coming up with strategies on the fly. Every time we ran into something new, I knew it was to our benefit, because Wong not only figured out how to take advantage, but he did so very quickly. I learned a heck of a lot from Wong."
(As an aside, Anthony had been trying to get a date with a cocktail waitress from the Lady Luck. When he made the finals of the Matchplay tournament, he called her and asked her if she’d like to come down and see him play for $70K—a lot of gambling money in the mid ’80s for 25-year-olds. When Anthony won and they gave him the money right there in cash, he says, "This girl’s eyes about popped out of her head." The money was in a box and they went to the lounge to start the celebration. All of a sudden, Wong showed up out of nowhere with a paper grocery bag. He hardly acknowledged the girl, told Anthony he played well, then dumped all the money into the bag and took off. Anthony recalls, "It was kind of hard to explain."
Anthony had a lot of success in the tournament scene, but those were high-profile wins and he began to become known to the casinos. Right around that time, he realized that there was more money to be made in gambling than just by actually gambling, so he began tinkering with the idea of the Las Vegas Advisor.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
