Ken Uston - Most Significant Figure In Blackjack

Ken Uston may not have pioneered the concept of team play, but he certainly is the one blackjack personality who brought awareness of it to the general public, and inspired a lot of other blackjack players to do it. This happened by way of the press attention he received from the many mainstream media outlets who were intrigued by his story and what it represented. Indeed, there was a James Bond-like effect to the idea that he could walk into a casino and, regardless of the conditions, likely walk out with a large amount of its money.

Uston was also significant in that he garnered publicity from being banned from casinos. Actually, this was nothing new in the casino industry; after all, casinos, as a rule, are likely to bar players who they think are capable of extracting a long-term advantage, and have become better at this through the years by way of employing "counter-catchers." Nor was the barring of a player necessarily a legitimate credential symbolic of being a world-class player. In fact, often it is a sign of weakness, in that the player is not able to camouflage his or her play properly. Nonetheless, Uston was barred from all the Las Vegas casinos through his inclusion in something called the "Griffin Book" and exploited it for all it was worth.

There were daily newspapers from across the US, as well as international magazines, that wrote stories about him, and he enhanced his news-making ability when he began suing the casinos who barred him for the right to play. He was profiled on 60 Minutes and 20/20. He did demonstrations for these programs on how he employed card counting to gain an edge. He showed how he went back to some of the casinos who had barred him and did so in disguise, going undetected by casino personnel. He had the jump on a lot of players who did not care to engage in publicity-seeking because it spoiled one of their greatest assets - anonymity. He became, in effect, a highly-marketable blackjack "brand."

He monetized that brand in certain ways. He opened a blackjack school. He wrote some books, including a very important one called "Million Dollar Blackjack," in which he laid out a number of different blackjack systems that could be used by all readers, regardless of their skill level. He developed software systems for blackjack play. He sold systems through the mail, including his Uston SS, which remains one of the more powerful blackjack strategies available.

He did everything, it seems, except play a lot of casino blackjack. Uston was well-known and banned in most places, and there were very few spots he could play after a while. He started to have interests in other things, including video games. One of the books he wrote, Mastering PAC-MAN, was actually on the New York Times best-seller list.

Uston, a jazz musician and aficionado, enjoyed taking trips to Paris and eventually got an apartment there. In 1987, he died very quietly in that apartment from heart failure. There is most certainly a considerable legacy he left behind, from the players who have learned directly from him and his materials to the teams and players who are using the blackjack betting techniques he championed. He is probably the most significant player we've known.