Remembering A Blackjack Legend
Ken Uston is a blackjack legend, and there is no doubt that he is the most popular blackjack player ever in the history of casino blackjack. Ken Uston's innovational blackjack team usually applied blackjack techniques that took millions from Las Vegas blackjack tables; this was before casinos detected their playing scheme.
Ken Uston, aside from being a gambling raconteur, was also a player, instructor, author and jazz musician. Kenny, as his friends called him, was your typical great guy that was fun to hang out with.
Ken Uston was brought up in middle-class society in a New York City household; Ken graduated from Yale with the highest honors. At the age of 31, he was already earning $42,500 a year, plus other fringe benefits, at the position of Senior Vice President of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.
He gave this all up, and decided to drop out of the corporate world to play his favorite game, blackjack, and became a professional player.
Ed Thorp is the one who invented the team blackjack, and was also given credit for it, but it was Kenny who became the key member of their first blackjack team, organized in the 1970's. Ken Uston launched a now out-of print book, titled "The Big Player", where his entire story, including this team's blackjack strategy, is told.
At the Resorts International in Atlantic City, opened in the year 1970, Kenny was a regular customer. This was not a good time for Kenny, since he was betting mostly a stack of green and losing.
His huge ego didn't stop him from conveying genuine concern about blackjack theories, and his other plan of teaching and writing about blackjack. Kenny talked about being an instructor and at the same time playing blackjack, as well.
Because of Kenny's skills in blackjack card-counting, casinos were given, by the Supreme Court, a countermeasure that would help them increase their odds against Kenny. The truth was, after this countermeasure was implemented, it did not matter at all. Kenny still won at the game of blackjack. He even said that nobody but him could have pulled the game off, and he was right.
It was in Las Vegas that Kenny had formed his final blackjack team in the year 1985. His friends reminisce about his big wins at Lake Tahoe, and at many casinos in Las Vegas.
In 1987 Ken Uston passed away from unknown causes. He was always remembered as a great person, whether it was at the game of Pac Man, writing, teaching, programming a computer, or playing blackjack.
Ken Uston is a gambling legend, and he was known as "The Master of Blackjack".
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