Uston continued to win—sharing perhaps $150,000 with his partners in the first six months—but his success began causing problems. Casino managers were suspicious of his stunning consistency, and soon, from behind the one-way ceiling mirrors, they were watching Uston. He was a strange one—moving constantly from table to table, placing puzzling and extravagant bets. The pit men knew he wasn't rich, but even a crushing run of bad luck ($71,000 in losses in one three-day stretch) failed to destroy Uston's confidence. During one whirlwind comeback, he won $27,600 in 45 minutes at the tables in the Fremont Hotel.
Casino security noticed that people at blackjack tables often scratched and twitched when Uston was around. Soon the reason for this odd body language became clear: Uston was the so-called Big Player in a "card-counting ring," a team of gamblers who kept track of the cards until the ones remaining to be dealt included a disproportionate number of tens, face cards and aces. When a player has that kind of knowledge, Uston says, the house odds are dramatically reduced. Uston was simply moving from one "hot" table to another after his confederates signaled to get his attention. (Frequent shuffling is the obvious weapon against card counting, but that takes time and thus costs the casino money.)
Unhappy casino officials decided Uston was "inimical to the interests of the state of Nevada" (as the gambling statute puts it) and declared him and his cronies unwelcome. For two years now they have been on notice that they will be arrested for trespassing if they try to work their scheme in Vegas again. For a while Uston was even afraid for his safety. Less anxious now, he has retaliated with discrimination suits against seven Las Vegas casinos, seeking $85 million in damages. Nothing he did was illegal, he insists, and he vows to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. "Barring me for winning," he says, "is like the major leagues saying they won't play ball with anyone but minor league players."
While the litigation continues, Uston will sometimes gamble, discreetly, with the aid of makeup, disguises and a half-dozen aliases. Without them, he is rebuffed either politely, with murmured expressions of regret, or bluntly, by strong-arm guards. Several weeks ago, despite his disguise, Uston says his chin was broken at a casino in Reno. To spare himself further grief, he now usually enters the casinos only vicariously, through the teams of counters and Big Players he has trained (250 so far, at $300 a head) at his headquarters in Las Vegas' Jockey Club.
Those who play with his money give Uston a 15 percent cut, and he is also a paid consultant on a film being made of his 1977 book, The Big Player, A second book, a technical treatise titled How I Won Three Million at Blackjack, will be published next spring. "Anyone with an IQ of 110 who passed high school algebra can be a counter," Uston claims in a promotional pitch. "You just have to be able to add." (Uston has some difficulty in that respect with his age. He gives it as 33, but that means he graduated from Harvard Business School at 14.)
The fruits of Uston's labors are quintessential Las Vegas: buxom showgirls, mirrored boudoirs and walls draped in silvery blue Mylar. Nothing could be further from the executive suite life he recalls with sorrow. The son of a Yale linguistics professor who was "sort of broke all the time," Uston attended the university on a scholarship en route to a Phi Beta Kappa key and a degree in economics. After Harvard he went to work for the phone company and settled uneasily into the life of a suburban Connecticut householder. He and his wife, a former stewardess, had three children before their divorce in 1973 and his departure for the job with the Pacific Stock Exchange.
Even gambling may not be his ultimate style, Uston says. "What I really wanted to be was a jazz musician," he confesses, and he takes every opportunity to sit in—on piano or bass—with jazz combos in the hotel lounges. His days now are more 5-to-9 than 9-to-5, whether he is in Vegas or on one of his gambling trips to Panama, Macao or Nassau. "I'd like to find the right woman, go around the world for five years and then settle down," he says—in Vegas. Compared to other gambling cities, he insists, "This is where the odds are." Though he may never again play blackjack in Nevada wearing a face his mother would recognize, Uston isn't calling it quits. "Somebody has got to show these guys that it's not unconstitutional to win," he says. Perhaps equally important, Uston has got a glamorous new life to protect. "I'll never sit in an office eight hours a day," he says. "Never again."
