THE BIG PLAYER: How a Team of Blackjack Players Made a Million Dollars

At present Ken Uston has $85 million in lawsuits leveled against some of the best casinos in Vegas--eight of 'em--that have barred him from exercising his natural skill at winning. Well, acquired skill. He and his team members, who use an improved Revere system for ""counting"" the deck, have taken the world's casinos for a million in the past two years. At its most expansive the team sported 21 members who could cover the blackjack tables like flies. Acting as small bet players, they would count the shoe, even when it held four decks, and pass signals to the ""Big Player"" who was acting like a fool and sometimes playing three tables at once and even several hands at different tables. The story of the team's disguises, feats of memorization, occasional splurges, and need to rein the Big Players' galloping egos, makes for some tense, lively reading. But The Big Player is not as literate or amusing as David Spanier's Total Poker or Ian Anderson's devilish solo artistry in Turning the Tables on Las Vegas (both from 1976).