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Ken Uston, A BlackJack Legend Remembered

Ken Uston was arguably the most famous blackjack player ever. His innovative blackjack team play techniques took millions off the Las Vegas blackjack tables before they were detected by the casinos. Player, Author, Instructor, Jazz Musician, and gambling raconteur, Kenny was a great guy to hang out with. This article contains a few of my remembrances.

Brought up in a middle-class New York City household, Ken Uston graduated from Yale with the highest honors. At the age of 31 he was earning $42,500 a year plus many fringe benefits as a Senior Vice President of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. But he gave it all up and dropped out of the corporate world to play professional blackjack.

Although Kenny didn't invent team blackjack, Ed Thorp gets the credit for that, he was the key member of the first blackjack team organized in the mid-1970s by a professional blackjack player in the San Francisco Bay Area. The fascinating story of this team is told in Kenny's out-of-print book, The Big Player.

The first time I saw Kenny, he was sitting at a blackjack table at Resorts International in Atlantic City ... shortly after the AC casinos opened in the late 1970s in the days of early surrender and when the casinos were required by regulation to deal at least two-thirds of the shoe with no shuffle-up allowed. Uston was by himself with the familiar curly hair and beard. Kenny, betting stacks of green, was losing heavily. "You don't want any part of this holocaust," he said to a friend.

I was a budding professional blackjack player at the time, having just published my first blackjack book - the first edition of Blackjack: A Winner's Handbook. I was also proud of a weekly gambling column that I was writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer. I decided I wanted to meet Kenny.

My wife Nancy, much more assertive than I, had no problem in accosting Kenny at the table, talking to him and arranging a dinner meeting with Kenny and his sister Lynn at the old historic, Knife & Fork Restaurant. Over dinner, the conversation was a jumble of Kenny's plans to form teams, his plans for a new book and his sister Lynn's attempts to pin him down for promotional appearances.

Kenny's huge ego didn't prevent him from expressing genuine interest in my blackjack theories and plans for teaching and writing. He talked about teaching a seminar in Washington, DC and I, a blackjack instructor as well, decided I wanted to learn from the master. I wrangled an invitation from Kenny, attended the seminar and learned a tremendous amount about teaching the game. Among Kenny's many talents, teaching was near the top of the list.

Kenny wanted me to play on his blackjack teams. I admit I was dazzled by all the prospects of quick money. But I turned him down, preferring instead to maintain a longer blackjack career. Kenny burned out team members very quickly. In those days, once you became known to the casinos, it was difficult to make money playing the game.

Kenny and I had many discussions about going into the teaching business together. Nancy (my business partner as well as my wife) and I listened to Kenny's offer one evening. He would lend his name to the business and make special appearances for selling and teaching. But when we proposed dividing the profits by three instead of two, as Kenny wanted, he balked, and our discussions went up in smoke.

This didn't affect our friendship. For a six-month period, while he was writing his book, One-Third of a Shoe (half of what became known as Two Books On Blackjack), we saw Kenny and his girlfriend, Suzy, at least once a week. We were asked to offer advice on the book and helped Kenny with his self-publishing activities.

Kenny needed some quick cash in the early 1980s and came to me for a loan. He offered collateral. So I lent him about $10K. The collateral? His collection of $500, $1,000 and $10,000 bills he didn't want to convert. He paid me back within just a few weeks. I met him inside the safety deposit room of an Atlantic City bank and Kenny repaid the loan in casino chips from Resorts International. One of his teams had just doubled a bank.

I have vivid memories of the last three times I saw Kenny. I had dinner with Uston the night before his win in the New Jersey Supreme Court was announced. He had beaten the casinos in a long and costly battle to earn the right to play blackjack without getting barred because of his card-counting skills. However, the casinos were given countermeasures that would make it difficult (if not impossible) for him to win. But this didn't matter. Kenny had made his point. He felt great that night and we both had too many drinks. "Nobody but me could have pulled this off," he said. And he was right.

In 1985, Kenny formed his last blackjack team in Las Vegas. He shaved his beard and straightened his hair. He looked like he did in his pictures when he was Vice-President of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. When I saw him at the Jockey Club, I knew him right away. But apparently the casinos didn't recognize him, because he played right alongside his team members all summer. I was teaching a class at the time and one day I remember the sounds of his piano filtering into my classroom there at the Jockey Club. Of course, the students were excited when I told them who was playing ... and we didn't get much done that afternoon. Kenny was a tremendous jazz pianist. He emulated Errol Garner - his favorite jazz pianist.

The last time I saw Kenny was at a gourmet restaurant at Resorts in Atlantic City. We discussed another joint venture over a fantastic dinner. As always, the talk turned to blackjack and Kenny reminisced about his teams and big wins. He told me how he once got a 100:1 betting spread in a single-deck game at Lake Tahoe, betting from $10 to $1,000 a hand without the deck being shuffled. Words are not enough to describe the drunk act he simulated that night, staggering around the floor of the restaurant in front of our table and others nearby, to show how he made the whole caper possible. It was a masterful lesson in the art of fooling the casino bosses, but could I or anyone else have pulled it off? I doubt it.

Kenny was a very special person. He excelled in everything he did, whether it was blackjack, Pac Man, teaching, writing, programming a computer, or whatever he undertook. Ken Uston passed away in 1987 from unknown causes.

Ken Uston is a legend of the Blackjack world whom everyone calls "The Master Of Blackjack".

Traveling over casinos in Nevada and Atlantic City, Ken and a number of teams of fellow programmers developed unique Blackjack strategies that basically made them rich. Using miniature computers hidden in their shoes for card counting and statistical analysis, fascinating team-play and absolutely awesome mathematical layouts Ken and his people used to earn hundreds thousands of dollars in less than a month. Ken then wrote a book called "Million Dollar Blackjack" that is considered sacred by players. The book describes simple and effective means of playing with the Basic Stragey and manipulating bets to achieve awesome results.

His other book “Ken Uston On Blackjack” remains one of the most popular Blackjack bestsellers today. Ken tells his story and provides anecdotal tell tale about his team. While short on the real Blackjack strategy advice, the book tells of an exciting spirit of the “old casino days”. Named the “Blackjack Player of the Century” by Blackjack Confidential Magazine, featured in national TV shows, Ken was insanely successful.

There is little doubt that Ken Uston is one of the most avid Blackjack players to ever be seen by the player community. His short gambling career quickly became a legend. Since giving up his senior position as a Senior Vice President of Pacific Stock exchange, having degrees from Yale and Harvard, Ken quickly achieved what many deemed impossible. Challenging casinos both on blackjack tables and in courtrooms (as casinos tried to bar him and the card counters from playing games), he consistently succeed to be adored and hated by his fellow players. Always open-minded and always persistent, Ken swept through the casinos even when they tried to bar him, cosmetically disguising himself . His legal team was combating the casinos is their attempts to persuade the gambling commission that the card counting was nothing but cheating. He was beaten and threatened several times and generally described the early years of his Blackjack experience as horrid because the casinos were treating him and his people as criminals and shown none of the respect that a player can expect in a casino today. Uston's game was big money, and casinos weren't about to just give it up.

Even today some players still think that with his bold act and books that reveal the professional secrets of the gamblers Ken Uston has ruined the “professional” Blackjack scene and made the casinos employ various limitations and rules on Blackjack that made formerly enjoyable and profitable gambling impossible. In his interview with Arnold Snyder Ken Argued that all of the methods that he disclosed in his works were developed either by him or his people, and that Blackjack is not a trade as so called professionals try to present it.

On September 19, 1987, Ken Uston, then 52, was found dead in his rented apartment in Paris. Apparently it was a heart attack that killed him... French police did no investigation as no foul play was suspected. Ken's body was cremated and no autopsy was ever performed. It's being said that his alcohol and drug habits have finally finished him off.

Jerry Patterson

Ken Uston Dies At 52 by Arnold Snyder

© Blackjack Forum 1987

BJF Vol. VII #4, December 1987

On September 19, 1987, in his rented vacation apartment in Paris France, Ken Uston was found dead of an apparent heart attack. French authorities reported that no foul play was suspected. His death was attributed to natural causes. His long-time friend and business manager, Jerry Fuerle, was quoted in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, as commenting, "His lifestyle just caught up with him."

His body was cremated, and his ashes were flown back to the U.S. At the time of his death, Uston was working as a computer consultant for the Kuwaiti government, and writing a book about his experiences in the Middle-East.

The blackjack world has lost its most flamboyant, most controversial, and most famous character.

Three weeks prior to Uston's death, I had the pleasure of meeting attorney and author I. Nelson Rose (Gambling and the Law, Gambling Times, 1986), at the Seventh International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking in Reno. Rose revealed to me that he had helped Ken in his futile legal battle to prohibit the Nevada casinos from barring card counters. Rose worked for Uston's cause anonymously and without pay. "I did it," Rose said, "because I believed in what he was doing. The only 'pay' I asked from him was an afternoon of his time, so that we could go around to different Las Vegas casinos and play blackjack together. That was worth it to me. I wanted to be able to tell my grandchildren that I'd played blackjack with Ken Uston. He's a legend."

In 1986, I myself spent a summer afternoon playing blackjack with Ken Uston. I was staying at the Circus Circus in Las Vegas and Uston was at his home away from his San Francisco home at the Vegas Jockey Club. I had been doing consulting work for Ken on a number of projects and he'd told me to call him when I was in Vegas because he wanted to show me his new "big player" act.

"I want you to see this, Arnold," he said, "but you can't write about it."

So I called him when I got to town. I told him I was at the Circus Circus.

"Great," he said. "I'll be there in an hour. I'll be down in the blackjack pit. When you find me, call me 'Tommy.' That's the name I'm using. Tommy Thompson. Circus Circus is one of my favorite casinos these days. Nobody knows me there. I took thirty-five hundred bucks out of there last week."

I couldn't imagine Ken Uston playing for big money in Circus Circus. High rollers were such a rare sight at their mostly $2 tables. But then, I'd never seen Ken Uston in action.

It took me half an hour just to find him. I'd known him personally for years, but I had never seen him before without his beard. The only way I did find him was by hearing his voice. He had a very distinctive voice. He was yelling far a cocktail, ". . . and make it a double!"

He was a sight to behold, this man who held degrees from both Harvard and Yale, one time Vice President of the Pacific Stock Exchange. It was Uston's voice, but it was coming from a pathetic looking bum - a clown of a figure with a two-day growth of stubble, a rumpled plaid shirt, dirt under his finger nails.

I approached the table hesitantly

He jumped out of his seat when he saw me. "Arnold," he beamed. "Sit down! I'll buy you dinner if I can just get my damn money back. Shit, this always happens on payday. These bastards take everything I make!"

I sat down at the half-full table and put a nickel chip in my betting circle. Uston was playing two hands, at $200 each. "How are you doing, Tommy?" I asked.

"Man, it was hot down there today," Ken went on. "No matter what the temperature is here in Vegas, it's twenty degrees hotter down in them sump pits at the Hoover Dam. I gotta find a better job, man. I hear they're hiring busboys down at the El Cortez, but the pay is shit. Man, it's gotta be better than cleaning out them smelly sump pits."

I had no idea what a sump pit was. I wondered where this otherwise meticulous man - who had never done a day's hard labor to my knowledge - had found dirt to put under his fingernails. In the potted plants at the Jockey Club? It was difficult for me to contain my laughter. He went on like this for half-an-hour, complaining about his demeaning job and his gambling losses, belting down drinks, spreading his bets from $5 to two hands of $200 each.

There was no heat. He was scaring tourists away from the table almost as soon as they'd sit down, but the pit boss didn't seem to mind - not the way this seemingly foolhardy loser was throwing his rent money on the table. Well, Kenny, you were one-of-a-kind. I number myself among those who are honored to have played at the same table with you. There are few who lived life as fully as you did. You were always David fighting innumerable Goliaths. And more often than not, you won. We'll miss you, Ken.

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