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Andy Bloch interview

Andy Bloch started playing poker in the early 1990s, after graduating from MIT with two electrical engineering degrees. His poker career has been very successful, especially after becoming a full time professional in the mid 1990s. A few highlights from Andy's poker career:

• In 1993 Andy won his first poker tournament, the World Poker Finals $100 No-Limit Hold'em event at Foxwoods Casino;
  
• In 2001 Andy had two final tables at the World Series of Poker;
  
• Andy finished third in two World Poker Tour events: the Foxwoods World Poker Finals in 2002 (winning $102,350), and the Commerce LA Poker Classic in 2003 (winning $125,460);
  
• In October, 2004, Andy won a No Limit Texas Hold'em tournament at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas, netting $102,750;
  
• Finally, in November, 2004, Andy was part of the U.S. team that beat the Hendon Mob in the Transatlantic Cup in Monte Carlo, where he beat Ram Vaswani in his match. This was the first time ever the Hendon Mob was defeated in match play.

However, there's more to Andy Bloch then just poker. Besides the two electrical engineering degrees already mentioned, he also graduated from Harvard law school in 1999. He never found a law job that could keep him interested for long. "I'm still "looking" -- at least that's what I tell my parents.", Andy comments on his personal website.

Andy is also an extremely skilled Blackjack card counter, though he focuses mainly on playing Poker nowadays. He was once a member of the now famous MIT Blackjack team, who made a lot of money beating the casinos at Blackjack in the 1990s. When asked, Andy estimated he had earned "six figures" counting cards.

Andy also runs the popular WPT fan community with 4,000+ members, and is an active ambassador for Full Tilt Poker, which software he helped designing as a poker consultant.

We interviewed Andy Bloch at the same time he was playing in the Monte Carlo Millions tournament, and just before he and his teammates defeated the Hendon Mob in the tourney's Transatlantic Cup. With such a busy schedule, we are very happy Andy has found the time answering our questions. We're sure you will have fun reading it, because Andy's career as a professional card-counter and poker player, has been very interesting so far, to say the least.

This interview is divided in four sections. In Part 1 Andy talks about how he managed to outsmart Foxwoods Casino. Part 2 discusses Andy's experiences with the famous MIT Blackjack team. Part 3 is a short section on gaming and the law. And in Part 4 we get to ask Andy a couple of questions on our favorite subject: Poker!

This interview starts with Part 1: Beating Foxwoods Casino