[5] At the age of 16, Uston was accepted to and henceforth began attending Yale University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

After several years in consulting, he became corporate planning manager for American Cement in Los Angeles before returning to San Francisco where he became a Senior Vice-President at the Pacific Stock Exchange.

When a count became extremely positive, they would flag the "big player" member of the team who would come in and place large bets.

Soon after the publication of Uston's book, it is reported that Al Francesco's team found itself effectively barred from playing in Las Vegas.

In Uston v. Resorts International Hotel Inc., 445 A.2d 370 (N.J. 1982),[7] the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Atlantic City casinos did not have the authority to decide whether card counters could be barred absent a valid New Jersey Casino Commission regulation excluding card counters.

In response to Uston's legal victory, Atlantic City casinos began adding decks, moving up shuffle points, and taking other measures to decrease a skilled player's potential advantage.

[3] After his numerous casino barrings—now on his own and without a team—Uston adopted a wide variety of physical disguises in order to continue to play blackjack.

The game appealed to him in part because of the trick of counting one's shots to get the maximum number of points for the spaceship at the top of the screen.

He realized the game had patterns and, in order to gain an advantage, he began experimenting and writing them down on diagrams of the maze he had created, but he was unable to go beyond a certain level.

On a trip back to San Francisco, he came across two Chinese-American boys by the names of "Tommy" and "Raymond" who taught him how to go further in the game.

After receiving lessons from the two boys, Uston decided to go ahead with the book, titled Mastering Pac-Man, and wrote it in four days.