Ken Uston: The Blackjack Player Who Took Casinos to Court

Ken Uston was an American blackjack player and author who, in the late 1970s, became a central figure in a long dispute between casinos and skilled players. A graduate of Yale and Harvard who had held a senior post at the Pacific Stock Exchange, he left finance in the mid-1970s to join and then lead teams of card counters. On January 30, 1979, Resorts International barred him from the blackjack tables of its Atlantic City casino. He challenged the ban, and on May 5, 1982 the New Jersey Supreme Court decided Uston v. Resorts International Hotel, Inc. in his favor, on narrow grounds that turned on who held the power to make such a rule. The ruling did not end the contest, because regulators answered with changes to the game itself. This profile follows his documented career, books, court fights and death in 1987, with the costs and disputed figures set beside the legend. It describes what happened, not how card counting is done.

From Yale to the Pacific Stock Exchange

Sources agree on the outline of his early career. The Encyclopedia of Blackjack gives his birth date as January 12, 1935, and lists him as also known as Kenneth Usui. The Washington Post reported in 1979 that he graduated from Yale, where his father had taught linguistics; TIME and the Los Angeles Times add that he was Phi Beta Kappa. The Los Angeles Times wrote in 1987 that he also earned a master’s degree in finance from Harvard Business School; TIME called it an M.B.A.

Video Games magazine reported in 1982 that he was Director of Operations Research at the Southern New England Telephone Company before holding executive posts on the West Coast and at the Pacific Stock Exchange. The Los Angeles Times says he was a senior vice president of the Exchange and president of its subsidiary, Pacific Clearing Corp., when he moved into gaming in 1974. The New York Times obituary puts his time as a senior vice president at six years.

TIME reported that Uston read Edward Thorp’s 1962 book Beat the Dealer in 1968, and the Washington Post said the book appealed to him. In March 1974, according to Video Games, a professional gambler using the pseudonym Big Al Francesco telephoned him and he joined Francesco’s team. TIME says that in 1974 he tested himself at Harrah’s in Reno and won $3,000.

Team Play and the Road to Atlantic City

Video Games reported that Francesco’s team won about half a million dollars before an alert shift manager at the Sands in Las Vegas uncovered it, roughly two years after Uston joined. Uston then wrote The Big Player, published in 1977 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston with Roger Rapoport. The Blackjack Hall of Fame says the book exposed Francesco’s teams and caused a falling out with Francesco that lasted years, though the two later patched up their relationship.

Over the next five years, Video Games reported, Uston organized new teams that were estimated to have netted about $4 million in some 300 casinos from Las Vegas to Macao. TIME reported in 1981 that he and his team had won more than $4.5 million, that his biggest single win was $27,500 in 45 minutes at the Fremont in Las Vegas in 1975, and that during one stretch of 23 straight days he fell behind by as much as $35,000 before finishing ahead.

The attention had a price. The New York Times obituary says he was barred during the 1970s from card tables in Atlantic City, Nevada and Europe, and that he resorted to disguises to get back in. TIME quoted him: “I have been a British aristocrat and I have been a cowboy.” It added that a Hollywood makeup artist, Mike Westmore, had designed his disguise kit.

In Nevada, a federal judge granted summary judgment to the defendants on March 21, 1978 in Uston v. Hilton Hotels Corp. over his June 29, 1975 removal from the Flamingo Hilton: the federal claims failed, chiefly for lack of state action, and the state claims were dismissed for lack of diversity jurisdiction.

The Resorts Case: What the Courts Decided

According to the New Jersey Supreme Court, Uston first played at the Resorts casino in November 1978. A new Commission rule took effect on January 5, 1979, and on January 30 Resorts’ attorneys asked Commission Chairman Lordi whether it could remove card counters. Lordi replied that no statute or regulation barred it, and before the day ended Resorts excluded Uston. The Commission upheld the exclusion in a final order dated December 31, 1979, holding that Resorts could exclude anyone it chose, short of civil-rights violations.

The Appellate Division reversed on May 11, 1981, in 179 N.J. Super. 223, reasoning that the Act gave the Commission, not the casinos, the power to exclude persons.

The Supreme Court heard argument on February 9, 1982 and decided on May 5, 1982. The court held that the Act gave the Commission exclusive authority over the methods of playing licensed games, so Resorts could not exclude Uston for card counting. In the court’s words, “The Commission alone has the authority to exclude patrons based upon their strategies for playing licensed casino games.” The court did not decide whether the Commission could ban card counters, and it continued a temporary ban for 90 days.

Aftermath: New Rules, New Books and Paris

The Commission answered with rule changes. A 1983 Villanova Law Review note says new blackjack regulations took effect on September 15, 1982, allowing reshuffling at any time and limiting maximum bets in certain situations. A 1997 Appellate Division opinion says the Commission’s 1982 measures also included more decks, a different shuffle method and a continuous shuffling shoe, but did not authorize exclusion.

Uston kept writing. His blackjack books included Million Dollar Blackjack (1981) and Ken Uston on Blackjack (1986). Video Games reported that he wrote Mastering Pac-Man in four days in 1981 and that it reached the New York Times best-seller list; the New York Times obituary credited him with 16 books on blackjack, video games and personal computers.

He died in Paris on September 19, 1987, aged 52. The Los Angeles Times reported, citing the Associated Press, that the cause was given only as natural causes. Arnold Snyder wrote in Blackjack Forum that he was found dead of an apparent heart attack in a rented apartment, that French authorities suspected no foul play, and that he was then working as a computer consultant for Kuwait. The Encyclopedia of Blackjack says no autopsy was performed.

Myths, Disputes and the Other Side

Figures differ. The date and pay of his departure from finance are disputed: the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post place it in 1974, TIME says 1975 and a $50,000 salary, and Video Games gives $42,500. Winnings also differ: about $480,000 in seven months in the Washington Post, a half-million in Video Games, and $4 million to $4.5 million overall. No source examined gives audited accounts. The Encyclopedia of Blackjack dates his death September 17; other sources say September 19.

The ruling is often summarized too broadly. The court decided who held the power to exclude, not whether exclusion was lawful. The 90-day temporary ban counts to August 3, 1982 from May 5, yet the law-review note says the order ended on September 15; the sources do not reconcile this.

The other side includes the barring from casinos, the disguises, the lost Nevada suit and the long break with Francesco.

Ken Uston Timeline

Related Stories

Uston’s story begins with a mathematician, and it unfolds against the growth of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The 1962 book that drew him to the tables is covered in the profile of Edward O. Thorp. Together these stories describe the casino world that Uston’s teams entered and that courts and regulators then reshaped. Las Vegas’s earlier casino era is told in the Flamingo’s opening in 1946. The casino floor he fought over had older roots, told in the history of slot machines and the history of roulette. Dice, the oldest instrument of chance, have their own story in the history of dice, and another dated landmark appears in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Sources & References

• Supreme Court of New Jersey — Uston v. Resorts International Hotel, Inc., 89 N.J. 163, 445 A.2d 370 (decided May 5, 1982)
• Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division — Uston v. Resorts Int’l Hotel, Inc., 179 N.J. Super. 223, 431 A.2d 173 (decided May 11, 1981)
• U.S. District Court, District of Nevada — Uston v. Hilton Hotels Corp., 448 F. Supp. 116 (March 21, 1978)
• Robert W. Whetzel — Gaming: New Jersey’s Casino Control Act and a Casino Patron’s Right of Reasonable Access, 28 Villanova Law Review 451 (1983)
• Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division — Campione v. Adamar of New Jersey, Inc., 302 N.J. Super. 99 (June 9, 1997)
• TIME — Law: Blackjack Buckaroo (May 25, 1981)
• Tom Zito — Blackjack Legend, The Washington Post (March 1, 1979)
• Burt A. Folkart — From Stock Exchange to Casino: Kenneth Uston, Barred Blackjack Player, Los Angeles Times (October 7, 1987)
• Kenneth S. Uston Is Dead at 52; Famed and Banned Card Player, The New York Times (October 7, 1987)
• Roger Dionne — Ken Uston, Video Games interview (December 1982)
• Arnold Snyder — In Memory of Ken Uston, Blackjack Forum (December 1987)
• Kenneth Uston, The Encyclopedia of Blackjack
• Ken Uston, Blackjack Hall of Fame
• Ken Uston and Roger Rapoport — The Big Player (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), Internet Archive catalog record