Andy Bloch – MIT Blackjack Team and Poker Player

Andy Bloch is a well known poker player and has established himself as a top poker professional. He wasn’t always a poker player and in his 20’s played on the MIT blackjack team and was able to use card counting to win millions from Las Vegas over 6 years.

The telegraph has a great article with Andy Bloch on his experience playing on the MIT blackjack team. He said it took him 6 months to pass the rigorous test before he was able to join the team in live blackjack play. He played with the team for 6 years and said he was able to make a half a million dollars during the weekends playing with the team.

He has now been barred from nearly every casino in Las Vegas and across the world. Although, he still goes to casinos to play poker he is led by casino security straight to the poker tables without the chance to sit down and play blackjack. At some casinos he has to get special permission to enter because of being barred from ever stepping foot in the casinos.

Card counting is not illegal but casinos do have the right to ask you to leave and also to bar you from playing again. The sudden interest in card counting has been sparked by “21” which is based on the true story and experiences of players that went to school at MIT and during the weekends traveled to vegas and card counted for a living. The MIT Blackjack team used the Hi/Lo Card Counting technique along with team play to allow them to card count without being detected by security.

This blog entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Blackjack News. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.