Andy Bloch Interview

Andy Bloch first became well-known because of his association with the MIT blackjack team. Now he has become successful as both an internet poker player and a live poker player. This interview is from Rounders The Podcast, with Adam Schwartz and Mike Johnson. Come join Andy where he plays online poker exclusively; at Full Tilt Poker.

Mike: Andy was all over the place at the World Series, front and center, making headlines for both his play at the tables, and some very interesting stories away from the tables. He had by far his best World Series of Poker Ever, winning over a million dollars; 5 cashes, 2 final tables highlighted without question, by a second place finish in the 50K H.O.R.S.E mixed game event; considered by many to be really the deepest most challenging field of players from top to bottom of any poker tournament ever.

He was embroiled in a marked card controversy in the same event. During the World Series it was announced that he was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit launched by a number of prominent players against the World Poker Tour. You know him as one of the founders of Full Tilt Poker and one of the foremost authorities on blackjack as well.

Andy it's been over a year since you were on the program last, welcome back. I don't even know where to start with you. First of all congratulations on a phenomenal World Series highlighted by the H.O.R.S.E event, tell us first of all where that ranks in your accomplishments. I know it's a second place finish, but from a prestige standpoint, that has got to be as good as any win you've ever had?

Andy: Yeah, just about. In any World Series of Poker event, everyone dreams about winning the bracelet. I had never won a bracelet before and of course, I really wanted to win, but finishing second in any World Series of Poker event is a great accomplishment. Other than the main event, that's the event that everyone wanted to finish well in.

Mike: I heard that over and over again. I want to talk to you about how you approached that event mentally. First of all, obviously you have to be good at every game, but I just want to talk about sitting down where you're used to being the man, and you've got 4 or 5 guys who you've never met, and 4 or 5 guys you know you're better than. Now you've got to sit down, and there's 9 or 10 Andy Blochs sitting right at the same table with you, and that's right at the start of the tournament. How intimidating was that to know that this was all superstars in that event?

Andy: Well, the nice thing was that I had played with all of the players before, so we had an idea of what each others styles were like and how we played. So it wasn't like pacing in an unknown like it would have been 10 or 15 years ago if I had gone and been at that same type of final table. It would have been a lot scarier, but since I had been playing with a lot of the people before and done pretty well against many of them, I wasn't that worried. Although some of them, like Barry Greenstein who was at my table initially, he plays in the big H.O.R.S.E game, the 4K/8K game all the time, so he plays all these games a lot. A lot of the other people at the table didn't necessarily play all of the games that much. I've spent a lot of time playing H.O.R.S.E in some home games and in an email duplicate poker game that has gotten me a lot of experience and a lot of practice in studying the game.

Adam: Were you ok with the fact that in the H.O.R.S.E event you played all of the games up until the final table and then all of a sudden for Harrah's and the ESPN cameras, you switched to no-limit hold 'em. Second, were you intimidated at all by the amazing final table that you ripped through to second place there?

Andy Bloch: Well, I would have preferred that it would have stayed H.O.R.S.E at the final table at least for a full round. It would have been nice if the TV had gotten to show some of it, even if they didn't want to show all of the 5 different games, at least a few hands here and there. That was something that Harrah's decided really early on when they had announced the tournament. If it was up to ESPN and if they had to, they would have filmed all of the games. So it wasn't completely ESPN's fault, it was just a decision made early on that they thought would be better for TV so they stuck with it.

The second part of your question, I just kept telling myself before the final table that this was just another poker tournament. Just like you happened to be playing on the computer or something and they have all these players' names on there. They're just other players and I wasn't going to change my game plan because of that. Obviously, you always adapt your game plan to your opponents, but I wasn't going to play scared, and I wasn't going to sit back and wait until people bust to move up into the 4th place even though I was third place in chips. I was gonna try my best to win the tournament.

Mike; Was there any pattern as to which players made it to the end. Was it the players that were better at the stud games and traditionally played more of the Stud games? It seemed like a lot of the people were saying "We knew the guys that specialized in hold 'em were gonna be the ones to bust out first. Did you see any patterns among the players that you saw lasting longer in that mixed game?

Andy: Yeah, the people that were good at all the games are the ones that lasted longest. The people that were specialists in one game and the people that play a lot of hold 'em...you know those people might have lasted a while, they might have made the money, but when it came down to it, they ended up losing their chips before the final table.

Adam: The amazing thing that I heard when I was talking to people about the H.O.R.S.E event was watch out for Chip Reese, he's such a  great player, he's a great all around player and the event is totally made for him, and look, he goes out and wins it. Were you just totally impressed by Chip and how he played?

Andy: Well, fortunately I didn't have to play with him until the final day. I think I really benefited a lot from that. It would have been fun, it would have been a good experience to watch him play and play against him, but I didn't have to.

So I didn't get to watch him play. Obviously it's very impressive how many chips he accumulated, but at the final table it was all no-limit hold 'em. So it was just him playing no-limit and he's not known for being a great no-limit player. He's known for being a good one and a strong one, but you know, not like Phil Ivey who's known for being a great all around, and a great no limit hold 'em player. But, Chip played the final table very well. It's hard to tell of course how well he played because we can't see his cards yet. Eventually we'll be able to see his cards, at least some of them and maybe we'll see him making a move on Phil Ivey.

Adam: Are there a couple of hands that you can't wait to see that you played against him?

Andy: Well there's one hand in particular that I'm interested in which I played against him. I think we were about 5 or 6 handed. I had opened up with A-9 off-suit in early/middle position. Phil Ivey re-raised in late position and Chip made a re-re-raise. I'm not sure if he actually put Phil all-in, but he basically committed himself. I folded and Phil Ivey thought for a long time...2,3,4,5 minutes. We were all getting up walking around wondering what in the world could Phil have? I think right now that Phil had A-Q, I'm surprised that he thought that long on A-Q, but I know he's thinking that chip was thinking he would just re-raise me in a lot of situations because I was opening a lot of pots. And I knew that too, but there was no way that I could call Chip's re-raise.

So Phil was thinking about it, but Phil has a history of over playing A-Q and knocking himself out of tournaments, so it's possible he had that hand and of course he would lay it down in that spot.

Mike: Now you made the news on day 1 of this event. A lot of people noticed nail-marked cards. A lot of people said something about it, but you were the one who made the biggest headline. Sort of walk us through that. When people hear there were marked cards, they are thinking about maybe purposely mark cards. How did it all happen. Was it poor cards, was it somebody trying to get an edge, was it a combination of the two? What do you think went down there?

Andy: I don't really know how the cards got marked. Harrah's made a bad decision to not have enough cards to start every tournament, every day, with brand new cards. So they were using cards that had been used on previous days, in previous tournaments or in the cash games. Sometimes the players are rough on the cards and their nail marks get in the cards. Sometimes it's by accident, sometimes it happens when they squeeze the cards. A lot of the high limit players like to do this in some of the high/low games.

They try to bend the cards so they only see part of it... see if they can figure out what the card must be, deducing it based on the number of number of dots that they see, what the color it is and so on. So they like to do stuff like that, but the problem is that it leaves marks on the cards. A lot of the cards get marked, and if you're not starting with new cards, the deck may have come from a table where the players were doing something like that. So it's probably not on purpose that it happened, but it just happened that way.

Another player noticed a marked card at my table and they even brought out a second deck, because they always start with 2 decks at the table. I started noticing half a dozen marked cards, so I started bending the cards because I didn't want them to put the cards back into play.

Mike: Now normally that would be the dealer's job to bend the cards, but you went ahead and did it yourself?

Andy: Well the dealers like to do that, but the dealers wind up putting them back in and the cards never get out. So I was kind of annoyed because that was something I had been complaining about for the entire series. I got them finally to agree to start every day 2 of every tournament with brand new cards.

It's the kind of thing that annoys me. It's something that's very cheap, at least per player. Over the entire world series it can cost a lot of money. If Harrah's is gonna look at how much it costs for cards at the series than it looks like a lot of money. I have to give Harrah's credit. I had this little argument. I basically got warned that if I didn't calm down and stop bending the cards they would give me a 10 minute penalty. I said "Fine give me a 10 minute penalty, because I want to go talk to the tournament director about getting new cards."  Anyway, I didn't even end up missing a blind and they agreed to have new cards and decided to start the next day with all brand new cards. And not just that, but every break, every 2 hours, they would put in a brand new deck. That I really appreciated. I think they went above and beyond what I was asking. Although that's something that should be automatic in a tournament that size...that you start with new cards and you get new cards every break.

Adam: So that aside, what were your general impressions of the World Series this year? Some improvements? The quality of the field and that kind of thing?

Andy: It's an amazing undertaking and I don't know of any company that could do the kind of job that Harrah's did. There were a lot of problems of course, but they did a lot of things right and you've got to give them a lot of credit for that. It's an enormous place. I don't know if you have been there, you've got to go sometime during the World Series before they change it, and who knows what's going to happen if they change it, but it just is an absolutely enormous room with over 200 poker tables. There is usually 3, 4, or 5 different tournaments going on at the same time. Dozens of satellites; single table satellites, multi-table satellites, super satellites, cash games, it's amazing how much stuff is going on. Given all of that, you are not surprised if a few things go wrong.

To hear the rest of this interview, head over to the home of Rounders The Podcast at www.bigpoker.ca

go back to our
Internet Poker Guide