Although I didn't see much of Kenny Uston during the four years before his death, I still considered him a close, personal friend.  He was very easy to like and very easy to be around.  I have many fond memories of our association.  Let me share a few of them in this remembrance.

The first time I saw Kenny was sitting at a Blackjack table at Resorts International in Atlantic City ... in the days of early surrender and when the casinos were required by regulation to deal at least two-thirds of the shoe with no shuffle-up allowed.  Uston was by himself with the familiar curly hair and beard.  Kenny, betting stacks of green, was losing heavily.  "You don't want any part of this holocaust," he said to a friend. 

I was a budding professional Blackjack player at the time, having just published my first Blackjack book.  I was also proud of a weekly gambling column that I was writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer.  I decided I wanted to meet Kenny.

My wife Nancy, much more assertive than I, arranged a meeting and we had dinner with Kenny and his sister Lynn at the Knife & Fork restaurant.  The conversation was a jumble of Kenny's plans to form teams, his plans for a new book and his sister's attempts to pin him down for promotional appearances.

Kenny's huge ego didn't prevent him from expressing genuine interest in my Blackjack theories and plans for teaching and writing.  He talked about teaching a seminar in Washington, DC and I, a Blackjack instructor as well, decided I wanted to learn from the master.  I attended the seminar and learned a tremendous amount about teaching Blackjack.  Among Kenny's many talents, teaching was near the top of the list.

Kenny wanted me to play on his Blackjack teams.  I admit I was dazzled by all the prospects of quick money.  But I turned him down, preferring instead to maintain a longer Blackjack career.  Kenny burned out team members very quickly.  In those days, once you became known to casinos, it was difficult to make money playing the game.

Kenny and I had many discussions about going into the teaching business together.  Nancy (my business partner as well as my wife) and I listened to Kenny's offer one evening.  He would lend his name to the business and make special appearances for selling and teaching.  But when we proposed dividing the profits by three instead of two, as Kenny wanted, he balked, and our discussions went up in smoke. 

This didn't affect our friendship.  For a six-month period, while he was writing his book, **One-Third of a Shoe**, we saw Kenny and his girlfriend, Suzy, at least once a week.  We were asked to offer advice on the book and helped Kenny with his self-publishing activities.

Kenny and Suzy didn't have many friends in this part of the country and we enjoyed sharing our friends with them for Suzy's birthday party that year (1980).  Kenny needed some quick cash during that period and came to me for a loan.  He offered collateral.  So I lent him about $10K.  The collateral?  His collection of $500, $1,000 and $10,000 bills he didn't want to convert.  He paid me back within just a few weeks.  I met him inside the safety deposit room of an Atlantic City  bank and Kenny repaid the loan in casino chips from Resorts International.  One of his teams had just doubled a bank.

I have vivid memories of the last three times I saw Kenny.  I had dinner with Uston the night before his win in the New Jersey Supreme Court was announced.  He had beaten the casinos in a long and costly battle to earn the right to play blackjack without getting barred because of card-counting skills.  However, the casinos were given countermeasures that would make it difficult (if not impossible) for him to win.  But this didn't matter.  Kenny had made his point.  He felt great that night and we both had too many drinks.  "Nobody but me could have pulled this off," he said.  And he was right.

In 1985, Kenny formed his last Blackjack team in Las Vegas.  He shaved his beard and straightened his hair.  He looked like he did in his pictures when he was Vice-President of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.  When I saw him at the Jockey Club, I knew him right away.  But, apparently the casinos didn't recognize him, because he played right alongside his team members all summer.  I was teaching a class at the time and one day I remember the sounds of his piano filtering into my classroom there at the Jockey Club.  Of course, the students were excited when I told them who was playing  ... and we didn't get much done that afternoon.  Kenny was a tremendous jazz pianist.  He emulated Erol Garner – his favorite jazz pianist.

The last time I saw Kenny was at a gourmet restaurant at Resorts in Atlantic City.  We discussed another joint venture over a fantastic dinner.  As always, the talk turned to blackjack and Kenny reminisced about his teams and big wins.  He told me how he once got a 100:1 betting spread in a single-deck game at Lake Tahoe, betting from $10 to $1,000 a hand without the deck being shuffled.  Words are not enough to describe the drunk act he simulated that night to show how he made the whole caper possible.  It was a masterful lesson for me and others sitting at nearby tables.

Kenny was a very special person.  He excelled in everything he did, whether it was Blackjack, Pac Man, teaching, writing, programming a computer, or whatever.