Blackjack Hall of Fame: Ken Uston
The Best Blackjack Player Ever
Though all the members of the Blackjack Hall of Fame are deserving of the honor, many people consider Ken Uston to be the best blackjack player of all time. He is certainly one of the most famous and his name will always live on in blackjack history. Uston is widely known as the Master of Blackjack and he has the history to back the reputation.
The Making of a Professional Blackjack Gambler
Ken Uston was born in 1935 and was a Yale University math student at the ripe old age of 16. He also went on to Harvard University, where he got his Masters in Business Administration. Uston led a relatively successful business-oriented life until he met Al Francesco, a subsequent fellow Hall of Famer, and the two became good friends. Francesco taught him all he knew about playing blackjack and Uston was born anew — as a card player.
Uston quit his job, joined a card-counting team and set out on the life of a professional blackjack gambler. His blackjack card-counting career was based mostly in Atlantic City after gambling was legalized in that city. At one point, he was barred from casinos there and he sued the casinos in turn. He won his lawsuit and as a result the Atlantic City casinos are not allowed to ban card counters, although they did change the rules of their blackjack games to make card counting more difficult.
The Blackjack Book that Created the Teams
Ken Uston's real claim to fame was his book, "The Big Player," which was published in 1977. In this book (which he wrote with Roger Rapaport), he outlined the methods of blackjack team play. In other words, he revealed Al Francescos's secrets. Until that time, the casinos were not really aware of the teams of blackjack players in their midst but Uston's book gave them the heads up.
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The result of Uston's book was twofold: on one hand the casinos were on the lookout from then on in for blackjack card-counting teams; but on the other hand many of the great teams honed their skills through techniques they learned in Uston's books and went on to greatness after its publication. The MIT Blackjack Team, for instance, was formed after the publication of Uston's ground-breaking work. |
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Uston's career as an author didn't stop with "The Big Player." In the 1980s he wrote several best-selling books on blackjack and subsequently became something of an expert on home video games. But blackjack was his first and true love and, as a member of several card-counting teams, Uston won millions of dollars at the blackjack tables. For almost 20 years he played in disguise to evade the Griffin Investigations Agency and the blackjack casino owners who wanted him out. Ken Uston died at the age of 52 in 1987 and was inducted posthumously into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. It wasn't too late to recognize the legend even if it was after his time.
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