Ken Uston Biography

Ken Uston whose birth name is Kenneth Senzo Usui is one of the most famous blackjack players in the world who has won millions at the blackjack tables in a variety of different and unique ways. Ken was born in New York City and at the age of only sixteen he started attending Yale University and then once he graduated from Yale he got an MBA from Harvard University. After finishing his MBA he started working jobs until finally moving out to San Francisco where he became the VP at the Pacific Stock Exchange. While working his VP job he spent most of his weekends playing blackjack in the casinos.

During the weekends of playing blackjack Ken Uston grew a strong love for the game and he met many contacts including an early contact by the name of Al Francesco who was a professional gambler that ran a blackjack team. Uston joined the team and started playing blackjack for the team and splitting profits with everyone. On the first weekend the team managed to make around $40K, but Ken only got about $2K of the profits. The technique the team used was they would count the cards and once a table become favourable for the team the big player would move onto the table and make big bets. This would allow the team to bet big without drawing any attention to them because it would be a new player coming to the table making the bets.

In 1978 Uston moved to Atlantic City due to the new casinos and he started his own blackjack team. Uston was banned from the casinos once they caught onto his schemes, but he turned around and filed a lawsuit against the casino that did it. The courts found Uston to be correct and that the casino couldn’t disallow someone into the casino based on their skills. During all of the legal action Ken lost his team that he built and he was again on his own.

Now that Uston was alone again he started playing blackjack by himself using many different disguises. Ken was one of the masters of making disguises for himself to use and it helped him win millions of dollars from the casinos over the years he played the game. Ken is also an author of numerous books which include “Million Dollar Blackjack” and “The Big Player”.

Ken Uston passed away in 1987 due to a heart failure, but over the years he made a mark on the blackjack world that is still talked about today. If you’re looking for some good blackjack books to read then I would also recommend picking up a copy of the books that Ken has written. Ken was also an avid arcade game enthusiast who would often be found at the Easy Street Pub down from the Playboy Casino in Atlantic City. He would often compete against other patrons of the pub in Pacman and was a very good player that won many competitions playing Pacman.