Known as “the blackjack man,” Ken Uston was an undergraduate at Yale and earned an MBA at Harvard. He began his college career at sixteen years of age. Uston worked a variety of management level jobs after graduating from college, most notably working for companies such as the Southern New England Telephone Company, American Cement, and the Pacific Stock Exchange. In his free time, he explored his passion for music and became one of the most famous card counters in the history of blackjack.
Ken was introduced to the game of blackjack by Al Francesco, whom he had met in a game of poker. At this poker game, Francesco recruited Uston to join his team of blackjack players. These players would go to a casino, taking up shop at different blackjack tables in an effort to count cards across a variety of blackjack tables on the casino floor. When the count got extremely high, the other team members would be called over, so that they could collectively take advantage of the high card count. This team remained together until Uston co-wrote a blackjack book called “The Big Player,” which detailed the tactics used and told tales of success in the blackjack card-counting scheme. Upon release of this book, the team was barred from Vegas Casinos.
Uston relocated to Atlantic City in 1978. It was here that he formed his own team of blackjack card counters. The Atlantic City Casinos quickly became wise to Uston’s tactics and attempted to bar him and his team members from playing blackjack in A.C. However, the laws protect blackjack players possessing skill from being barred from casino play. Thus, Uston and his team members were able to continue playing, thanks to a New Jersey State Supreme Court ruling.
Uston continued running his team in Atlantic City and he often returned to Vegas in disguise to play blackjack at the casinos he was banned from. In addition to penning the book “The Big Player,” Ken Uston wrote books such as Million Dollar Blackjack, as well as Ken Uston on Blackjack. He even wrote a book on the popular arcade game PAC-MAN, as he developed quite a passion for arcade games. It was due to his passion for video games, as well as his penmanship that he additionally struck a deal with ColecoVision to have a blackjack game developed for their gaming system in his likeness. This video game was called Ken Uston’s Blackjack/Poker, and was released in the early 1980’s by Coleco. Additionally, he took part in Ken Uston’s Professional Blackjack, which was released for the Atari, as well as the Commodore 64, Apple, and IBM computers. Ken Uston passed away in 1987 due to his heart failing.
