The PokerNews Interview: Andy Bloch

[Eric]

Since winning his first poker tournament in 1993, Andy Bloch has
amassed over $4 million in tournament winnings while also picking up a
couple of electrical engineering degrees from M.I.T. and a law degree
from Harvard. In addition to his two World Poker Tour final tables,
the Full Tilt Poker pro has 20 cashes in WSOP and WSOPE events,
including seven final tables and two runner-ups. Proving Bloch's
expertise in many forms of poker, those seven final tables came in
seven different games: no-limit hold'em, limit hold'em, pot-limit
hold'em, seven-card stud, razz, pot-limit Omaha, and H.O.R.S.E. And
Bloch bubbled the final table of a limit 2-7 triple draw event at the
2007 WSOP, as well.

Shortly after returning from the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour
Monte Carlo Grand Final, Bloch spoke with PokerNews about a variety of
topics, including blackjack (another card game in which Bloch has
proven his mettle), the current legal situation faced by online poker,
Annie Duke's run on Celebrity Apprentice , the structures at last
month's World Poker Tour Championship, and the upcoming World Series
of Poker.

PokerNews: Most of our readers are aware of your background,
including your experience in the 1990s with the MIT blackjack team.
You are still barred from some casinos, correct?

Andy Bloch: That's correct. Most places in Europe. And the one in
London where the World Series of Poker Europe was held the last couple
of years. When I've gone to register for the WSOPE, they've had to
call up their supervisors first and get a special okay for me. As far
as the U.S. is concerned, it varies from state to state. Most places I
can play anything but blackjack, although some places will only let me
play poker -- they won't even let me play the slot machines!

PN: Here's a question about another game -- chess. At the beginning
of your chapter in the "Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament
Edition" about preflop play in no-limit hold'em tournaments, you make
a comparison between preflop play and opening moves in chess. How else
would you say chess compares to poker?

Bloch: Well, there are obviously differences. In poker, there's hidden
information, so there's some uncertainty, especially for the outcome
of each individual hand. But as far as, say, the heads up game goes,
there is an optimal strategy, and just as much an optimal strategy in
poker as there is in chess, except in poker it's not a fixed strategy.
Sometimes you should be playing a hand one way, and sometimes a
different way -- to confuse your opponent.

There are other analogies, too. But people often say chess is a game
of skill whereas poker is a game of chance. And that figures sometimes
into legal debates. But, in reality... the line between a game of
chance and a game of skill is a lot blurrier than most people think.

PN: Barney Frank (D-MA), Chair of the House Financial Services
Committee, just this week introduced new legislation to counter the
Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). What are your
thoughts regarding the current legal status of online poker?

Bloch: The online poker world needs some legislation. And we need
regulation to make sure that there are mechanisms in place to protect
players when there are allegations of cheating, to make sure that it
is harder for children to access sites, and to make sure that problem
gamblers have an easier time both getting help and getting themselves
on self-exclusion lists.... That will make it better for the players
because then the they will have a lot more confidence that the sites
that they go and play on are going to take their interests seriously.

PN: Like a lot of people in the poker world, you have been following
"Celebrity Apprentice" -- in fact, you have been involved somewhat,
having helped Annie Duke's cause. What are your thoughts about how
Annie is doing?

Bloch: Well, Annie has been doing great, obviously. She's made it to
the final -- she's heads-up against Joan Rivers. It's great watching
it, because I have known Annie for several years and been friends with
her. I can watch Annie and look at her face and look at her reactions,
and then I can look at Joan's face and Joan's reactions, and Annie is
so much more in control of her emotions and of her actions. There are
probably a few things that Annie has done that I might have done a
little bit differently, but as far as all of the contestants on that
game go, Annie has by far played it the best and in a very honorable
way.

Some of the things that Joan has said to Annie are just, to me,
inexcusable. And for Annie to just sit there and take it -- with a
smile on her face, some of the time -- is just amazing. I mean, if
Annie had said some of those things to Joan, Joan would have jumped up
and stormed out of there and taken the elevator down and not come back
up.

To me, it would be, I think, a travesty if somehow Donald Trump
decided that Joan Rivers were to win. Nobody knows who won yet. They
have the final live on Sunday. I'm planning to go to New York for
that, and it will be very exciting. But, I mean, I just can't
imagine ... if Joan Rivers wins, it's going to be for some other
reason than how well she played the game, because she should've been
fired two or three times already.

PN: What was the problem at the WPT World Championship last month and
the structure there?

Bloch: At the WPT Championship, the $25,000 buy-in, the Bellagio
decided in order to compete with these "deep-stacked" tournaments in
other casinos, they wanted now to give everybody at least four times
their starting chips in every tournament. That meant that in the
championship we started with 100,000 chips instead of just 50,000 as
in the past . But they didn't change the structure early on to offset
that change . We still started with 50/100 blinds.

Now it is completely possible for a person to go broke in the first
level, still, of a no-limit hold'em tournament, even with 1,000 big
blinds. And I almost went broke. I had a straight flush and my
opponent, in theory, could have had a higher straight flush, but he
didn't.... But that's a complete outlier. I don't know if anybody
actually doubled up or busted out in the first level. Maybe one or
two. But that's such a tiny percentage, that for me it almost becomes
kind of a wasted day when you only lose 5-10% of the field.

So very few people busted on Day 1 . They only lost about half of the
field in the first two days. And then there were some 50% jumps in the
blinds on Day 3. At that point, you could have been cruising along
with a good stack and then you get to a stage where all the money is
going to go in on the flop for a lot of hands. To me, I'd much rather
have those hands on the first day than to go through and play two
whole days and then be forced to gamble .

There's actually a French physicist who did a whole bunch of research
and wrote a paper about structures in poker tournaments. He found the
size of the starting stacks doesn't affect at all, really, the
structure of the tournament later on. It basically is just the waste
of a level, extending the tournament unnecessarily . If you're trying
to solve the problem of the players not having enough big blinds at
the final table, the way to solve it is not by adding chips to the
tournament. The way to solve it is by adding levels later on, or
making the levels longer later, or finding some other way to speed up
play so more hands get played per level.

PN: That leads to the next question -- what are your thoughts
regarding the "triple stacks" being introduced at this summer's World
Series of Poker events at this year's WSOP in which players will start
with stacks representing three times the buy-in; e.g., 4,500 chips for
$1,500 events ?

Bloch: Actually, for the Bellagio Championship the deep starting stack
is almost not so bad, because it's not like there's another event that
you're going to go play the next day. But at the World Series, there's
a tournament every day and sometimes two tournaments that one would
like to play . There's a noon tournament and a 5:00 p.m.
tournament ... so for the 5:00 p.m. tournaments, especially, when they
give you these extra chips but don't start up at a higher level,
what's going to end up happening is you're wasting an hour or two of
people's time, and way more people are going to make it to Day 2 in
those tournaments and not be able to play in the next tournament at
noon. That's going to really significantly cut into how many people
play these events.

PN: And since the 5:00 p.m. tourneys are often the non-no-limit
hold'em tourneys, that could affect the turnout for those...

Bloch: Yes, and I love all these other games. I would try to play as
many as I can. The problem, of course, is that I'm going to have to
look at it and realize I'm probably going to have to skip the noon
tournament the next day whenever I play a 5:00 p.m. tournament. Or
play like a complete maniac, which isn't something I want to do,
either.

PN: What do you think the field is going to be like for the "40th
Annual" $40,000 no-limit hold'em event Event No. 2 ?

Bloch: I'd like to see at least 250 in the field, that way there would
be a $10 million prize pool. I actually think that's probably a good
guess as far as the numbers go. One problem is it is the first event,
so some people say a lot of Europeans might not make it there early
because they won't want to spend the whole five weeks in the United
States. But also, it's a good thing that it is the first event,
because nobody is going to still be in an earlier event that will make
them miss it.

PN: Which events are you most looking forward to playing?

Bloch: I'm looking forward to the $40,000 event, first. And then, of
course, the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event. And also all the $10,000 events
that they are calling "World Championship" events, especially the
mixed events and the other non-no-limit events.

PN: On your website you have a posted a transcript from a Full Tilt
Poker chat from a while back. Someone asks the question "Do you have
any bracelets?"

Bloch: Laughs.

PN: This was just after the 2006 WSOP, I believe, and you reply "I
have 0.93 bracelets," referring to your near-miss in the $50,000
H.O.R.S.E. that year won by Chip Reese . Last year you came very close
again, finishing second in the $10,000 pot-limit hold'em event to
Nenad Medic. Do you now have 0.97 bracelets?

Bloch: Ha ha, well, let's see... it depends on how you want to add
them up. In the H.O.R.S.E. event I got 0.93 because if you look at all
of the hands in which Reese was all in, it was 93% of the time I
should have won one of them. Last year, I actually only had Nenad all
in one hand -- it was a big three-way pot, and I had, I don't know, a
20% chance of winning that one. In the hand, Bloch had both remaining
players Medic and Kathy Leibert all in, with Medic holding pocket
queens, Bloch pocket nines, and Liebert pocket sixes. Medic won the
hand.

So if I had won that pot ... then it goes to 1.13 bracelets, which is
more than one! Or if you refer just to my chance of winning any
bracelet, then it would go from 0.93 to 0.95... laughs . But just
judging from the all-ins, I should have had at least one bracelet by
now.

PN: So here comes the question... What would it mean to you to get
that first bracelet?

Bloch: Well, it would mean I can finally stop...

PN: ...answering that question.

Bloch: Yes! And people also wouldn't talk about me being one of the
best players without a bracelet. But you know, a lot of my peers, a
lot of poker pros, they are kind of surprised when they hear that I
don't have a bracelet yet. So, in some sense, it's not like I need to
win it to gain the respect of my peers, because in a lot of ways
that's showing that they have a lot of respect for my game already if
they think that I must already have a bracelet.

It would be a great thing to win one and my goal for the World Series
is to win a bracelet. But if I get second in a big event, I'd be
pretty happy, too. I mean, I think I'd be happy getting second in the
$40,000 event or the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E., or to make the final table of
the Main Event. That would make me just as happy -- maybe even happier
-- than winning a bracelet in any random event.

PN: Finally, everyone wants to know... what's the story about the
hat?

Bloch: I got the hat for a Halloween costume one year. Then I wore it
in my blackjack DVD where I was portraying a particular Irish rock
star. Then I just decided to wear it one poker tournament, just for
fun. In that tournament, I had aces against aces, and I lost. So then
I decided to keep wearing it just to prove that it wasn't unlucky.

That was a couple of years ago at the World Series, and I made a
couple of final tables that year including the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E.
event in which I finished second against Chip Reese. So the hat kind
of became my trademark a little bit. Although I haven't been wearing
it a lot when I've been traveling, because that hat doesn't travel
well. It gets crushed!
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