2009 World Series of Poker – Interview with Andy Bloch

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

Andy Bloch playing in the 2009 World Series of Poker $40,000 Event #2
Photo credit: Gene Bromberg

Andy Bloch is one of the top players on Full Tilt and a player everyone wants to engage in conversation. He is playing in the 2009 World Series of Poker trying to win his first bracelet, sporting his own congregation of railbirds and fans. He can be found supporting many charities with his time, money and participation.

Andy took time out to speak with Tuscaloosa Johnny prior to kicking off his WSOP campaign and answer some questions about his experiences, goals, and the success of Full Tilt Poker.

Andy Bloch Q & A
by Tuscaloosa Johnny Kampis

One of the founding members of Full Tilt Poker, Andy Bloch is a Harvard law school graduate and former player on the M.I.T. blackjack team. And in case you haven’t heard he’s also a heck of a poker player with more than $4 million in tournament winnings, with several World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour final table appearances.

I first met Andy in 2004 during my first trip to the WSOP. At the time the oldest poker tournament was still held at Binion’s Horseshoe and Full Tilt Poker was in beta testing. My how things have changed. I caught up with Andy on Sunday as he played the $750,000 Guaranteed and the Put a Bad Beat on Cancer charity event on Full Tilt Poker, and was preparing for the nearly two months long 2009 WSOP.

The World Series of Poker is starting this week. Are you looking forward to it?

“Of course, that’s what you look forward to throughout the whole year. Every year you have five or six weeks of work and the rest of the year you look forward to getting back to the World Series.”

So the World Series is like Christmas for poker players?

“Except it’s like five weeks so it’s 40 days of Christmas, and you get to come back in November – or at least you’re hoping to.”

When you get toward the end, is the grind tough mentally?

“Whether you’ve had good results or bad results by the end of it you’re thinking, God, I really need a vacation. Why do I do this to myself? But you look forward to it all year. It’s great to have so many tournaments to play. The World Series is almost like a regular job. It’s actually worse than a regular job because you’re going in every day, sometimes at noon, sometimes at 5 p.m. and you can play until 2 a.m. or later. You’ve got to get up and come back in the next day and it’s seven days a week for five weeks straight.”

Most people would put you on the short list of the best players who have never won a bracelet and obviously you have come very close before. Is it frustrating for you to not have a bracelet or does it matter?

“I wouldn’t say it’s frustrating. I wish I had a bracelet. I got a little bit unlucky in a couple of hands in which I could have won the bracelet. I don’t feel like I’ve blown off and not given myself the opportunity to win bracelets. I wouldn’t mind having that monkey off my back and when people ask how many bracelets you have I don’t have to tell them zero, or make up some story about 0.93 bracelets or whatever.”

“Depending on how you calculate it mathematically I am over a whole bracelet in expectation. After I lost to Chip Reese when people asked me how many bracelets I have I would jokingly say 0.93 because I had Chip all-in four times and that was the chance he would win all four of those. And then I had another chance for a bracelet last year at the World Series at the first event. The only time I actually had everyone all-in was a big three-way pot where all three of us had pairs and I had the little pair. So I had about an 18 percent chance of winning that hand, and if I had won the hand I would have won the tournament right there. The chance that I don’t have any bracelets…you could argue that I could easily have two bracelets by now. The thing is you can’t judge your poker career by the results of a few hands after you’re already all-in. There are people that have won bracelets that got lucky in winning and they know that. Of course, people that have five bracelets or seven bracelets or 11 bracelets there has definitely been a lot of skill and they deserved those bracelets. I’d rather people say that I deserve to have one bracelet now than have someone say I got lucky to win one bracelet.”

When I first met you in 2004, Full Tilt Poker was just starting. Five years later is has grown into a behemoth. Did you ever think it would get as big as it has?

“That’s certainly what we were hoping. We were looking at the biggest sites back then and said if we were 10 percent as big as they were then that Full Tilt would be a success. We ended up passing what every site was back then as when we started and now we’re the second biggest site, much bigger than Party Poker was and Party Poker is now, and there’s one more site on our radar that we’re trying to catch.”

“Besides the success that Full Tilt Poker has, it’s also been pretty flattering that a lot of the other sites have copied some of the things that Full Tilt has done – the use of the players and the marketing. The television ads – you just look at the quality of the ads that were out there before Full Tilt started and then the quality of the ads now. They’re just enormously better.”

Do you have any goals in poker?

“Not really anymore. I’d love to win a few bracelets. My short-term goal is I’d like to win the second event of the World Series, the $40K, but, you know, that’s not really a goal. It’s going to be something that I’m going to try to do.”

Do you have any business stuff going on that you’re involved in or other things outside of poker?

“I haven’t done any more books or DVDs. I had that chapter in the Full Tilt Poker tournament strategy guide. That book is still out there and the DVD is still available. Right now I’ve spending a lot of time playing charity poker events. There seems to be more charity events than ever before. It seems that every charity event that ever started they keep doing it every year and then new charities come along and hold their own. So far this year as far as live charity events I’ve already done six or seven. It seems like there is one every couple of weeks.”

What are your thoughts on “Celebrity Apprentice” and the outcome of that? (Andy appeared on the show during a charity event to support Annie Duke.)

“I thought obviously that Annie Duke should have won. They made a lot of things unfair so that they could justify Joan Rivers winning. It seems like after that fact that they wanted her to win from the beginning. There were so many opportunities in which she should have been fired, but Donald Trump gave some excuse to fire somebody else. Annie obviously did the best job of anyone. She worked hard and contributed to her team.”

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