Andy Bloch
Andy Bloch says he is only delaying his career by playing poker, and so far, he has delayed it to the tune of $2.8 million in poker tournament winnings alone.
Born on June 1, 1969, Andy Bloch is one very smart poker player. He has two electrical engineering degrees from MIT, and together with fellow MIT alumni, they discovered how to beat a casino game called Hickok. However, the casino caught on to them and changed the rules of the game.
Andy Bloch had an argument with his boss and was fired in 1993. Andy Bloch joked with his parents that if he couldn’t find a job he could play poker for a living. After a few years without a job, Andy Bloch went to Harvard to study law. However, in both 1997 and 1998, he skipped the last week of classes in order to go play at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). At the 1997 WSOP, Andy Bloch was a guinea pig for a friend who wanted to record all of Bloch’s hole cards. These records were used in a two part Card Player Magazine article.
After graduating from law school and passing his BAR exam, Andy Bloch could not find a job he liked, so he played poker for a living. The only time he has ever practiced law was when defending himself after being arrested at an anti-war protest in 2003.
Of course, Andy Bloch’s amazing poker success is a big reason he hasn’t pursued law and any of his other careers. In 2001, Andy Bloch made two WSOP final tables. In the first season of the World Poker Tour, Bloch earned two third-place finishes. Andy Bloch won the second Ultimate Poker Challenge and finished second at the 2006 World Series of Poker $50,000 HORSE event where he lost to Chip Reese after a record 286 hand heads-up battle. Also in 2006, Andy Bloch won the Pro-Am Poker Equalizer, eliminating Phil Laak (“The Unabomber”) to win the half million dollar prize.
