While studying at MIT, Bloch became part of the MIT blackjack team, featured in the book Bringing Down the House. Bloch said he has made up to $100,000 in one session while playing blackjack. He was one of the members of the team to play in Monte Carlo as detailed in Ben Mezrich's Busting Vegas.
Andy Bloch, otherwise known as “The Rock,” is one of the most
intelligent players you will ever meet. Having degrees from both
a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Juridical
Degree from Harvard Law School, Bloch probably could have gotten
any job he wanted, but he chose to take a much different career
path instead.
- The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students and ex-students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, and other leading colleges who used card-counting techniques and more sophisticated strategies to beat casinos at blackjack worldwide. The team and its successors operated successfully from.
- Semyon Dukach, our founder, was a member of the MIT Blackjack Team and a professional blackjack player. He had played with the team Strategic Investments, which was formed by John Chang, Bill Kaplan and Massar in 1992. Semyon later became the leader of the team and the founder of.
His career in the gambling world started when he was a member
of the MIT Blackjack team, but as he got older his interest
moved towards poker. He has won over $4 million throughout the
course of his poker career so far and he’s the proud owner of a
prestigious WSOP gold bracelet.
Early Life
Andrew Bloch was born June 1st, 1969 in New Haven,
Connecticut. As a young child and throughout high school, he was
always playing different card games with his friends and family.
While attending school at MIT, Bloch got recruited to be a
part of the MIT Blackjack Team. By using the process of
card-counting, Bloch and his other team members were able to win
millions of dollar from the casinos of Las Vegas. Bloch claims
to have won over $100,000 in a single session.
After the hype of the MIT Blackjack teams started to fade
out, Bloch started working full-time for a small electrical
company in Westchester County, NY. A couple years later, he had
a huge debacle with his boss, causing him to lose his first job.
Due to his temporary unemployment status, Bloch was able to
spend more time at the Foxwoods casino, where he discovered a
new version of poker called, “Hickok 6-card.” He was able to
develop an advanced strategy for the game that gave him a 6%
edge over the house. Despite this huge advantage and his
tendency to win more games than he lost, the payouts for this
variation of poker were never substantial.
Journey to Becoming a Professional Poker Player
Members Of Mit Blackjack Teams
Bloch knew that in order to make a significant amount of
money in poker, he would have to start playing a more popular
version, so he took a huge risk and entered a $100 buy-in No-
Limit Texas Hold’em tournament. Despite never having
played that version of poker before, he took first place,
showing his natural talent.
Bloch was still hesitant about relying on poker as his
career, so he chose to further his education and enroll in law
school. He applied to all the top schools including
Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, but the only school that accepted
him was Harvard. He continued to play in blackjack and poker
tournaments to fund his tuition needs.
In 1997 and 1998, he had to skip his last week of classes to
attend the main event of the World Series of Poker, but despite
his absence he still passed his classes with flying colors.
Bloch passed the bar exam prior to the turn of the century, but
decided to hold off his law career to instead focus on his
career as a professional poker player.
In 2001, he made two WSOP finals tables and took third place
in two World Poker Tour events. The following year he won the
seven card stud tournament at Foxwoods. Andy landed two
first-place finishes winning the WSOP Circuit Limit Hold ’em
tournament at the Rio in Las Vegas and the Ultimate Poker
Challenge in 2005. Full Tilt Poker offered him a full
sponsorship, as the saw the great potential in this young
player.
At the 2006 World Series of Poker, Bloch finished runner up
to Chip Reese in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E event, winning more than
$1,000,000 from that event and his five other money finishes in
the WSOP that year.
Bloch came out victorious when he went head to head against
Phil Laak in the Pro-Am Poker Equalizer, winning the whopping
$500,000 cash prize. It was such an intense game that it was
later featured on an ESPN special. More recently in 2012, Bloch
won his first and only WSOP bracelet in the Seven Card Stud
event, abolishing the 367 other competitors and bringing home
over $126,000.
Other Poker Related Endeavors
Bloch donated all of his winnings from Full Tilt Poker.com to
various charities around the world and since he qualified for
the 2006 World Series of Poker main event through an online
tournament on the site, he decided that any money he won in the
event should be donated to charity too.
Earlier in his career he made the award-winning instructional
DVD, Beating Blackjack with Andy Bloch, which is used as a
reference for blackjack players everywhere. With the help of Dr.
Terry Bordan and Dr. Kristin Schaefer-Schiumo, he was also able
to write the book, Life Lessons: Hold’em Poker Style which was
published in April, 2013.
Anybody with the slightest interest in blackjack will have heard about the MIT Blackjack Team, which scooped up millions of dollars as blackjack winnings from unsuspecting casinos all over the Strip. The team turned out to be the biggest nightmare of the casino gaming industry at the turn of the twentieth century.
The MIT Blackjack Team, formed in the eighties, comprised six old students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who shared a keen interest in card games and wanted to use their knowledge, skills, and expertise to win in millions. The most popular of them was J. P. Massar, who was not only an active player, but also the manager of the team. The team spent years perfecting their techniques and strategies before finally moving into live casinos.
The MIT Blackjack Team used a large number of methods to make their millions, the most common of them being card counting. The team’s favorite card counting method was Hi-Lo, which worked wonders for them because they used it along with a card cutting technique that greatly enhanced their odds.
Casinos had a way of dealing with card counters that the MIT team could successfully evade. Whenever casinos detected card counters, they not only banned them, but also alerted other casinos against them. Casinos had created profiles of blackjack card counters; however, no casino profile matched the members of the MIT Blackjack Team, many of who were dark skinned and some of who were women.
The MIT Team walked into casinos pretending to be the spoilt children of rich parents. In their over eagerness to separate these kids from their cash, casinos hardly noticed that they were in fact dealing with the most outstanding group of card counters on earth. As a result, the team made around $400k during a single visit to Las Vegas.
Casinos failed to detect them because they worked as teams placed in categories of Spotters, Gorillas, and Big Players. The Spotters bet minimum and counted cards till the odds were in their favor, before motioning their high roller friends to join the fun. Gorillas did not count cards, but waited till the Spotters signaled to them. They pretended to be rich, dumb, and drunk, owing to which casinos hardly gave them a second glance. The Big Players bet, counted cards, and played at the same time, combining their card counting techniques with other techniques that helped them build huge bankrolls in no time.
All good things have to come to an end; accordingly, the good luck of the MIT Team also came to an end. They developed differences of opinion among themselves, after which it was difficult for them to work as a team. Casinos soon detected them and banned them one by one. One of the MIT team Ben Mezrich wrote a blackjack book called “Bringing Down the House,” which became very popular and later turned into the movie 21. Their story was told and re-told by ABC, History Channel, CNN, and CBS, and one of the team members even began offering seminars based on the team’s system.