Andy “The Rock” Bloch must really enjoy going to alumni reunions: with two Electrical Engineering Degrees from MIT and a JD from Harvard Law School, he has managed to make a fortune of over $3,700,000 playing poker for a living. He must be quite the hero among his white-collar former classmates.
Bloch grew up “with a deck of cards in his crib”, but he did not take poker seriously until he graduated from MIT. During his MIT years he was a member of the MIT Blackjack Club “The Amphibians,” where he has said he made as much as $100,000 in one blackjack session. As his skills grew, he increasingly used poker and blackjack to earn money between jobs and even to finance his Harvard Law Studies. Poker started to take priority over his law studies, and he missed part of the last week of classes in 1997 and 1998 to play the WSOP. After passing the bar he decided to delay his legal career to go into poker full-time, and he remains to this day a dedicated and successful player.
A true Renaissance man, Bloch has succeeded in the world of poker with several WSOP money finishes, including 2nd place finishes in both the legendary $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament in 2006 and the 2008 Pot Limit Hold’em World Championship. Besides poker, he remains an outstanding blackjack player and he also won the 2003 Roshambo (Rock-Paper-Scissors) World Championship. Bloch is a member of Team Full Tilt, and he has also authored a book and a DVD – an inspiring and little known fact is that Bloch donates 100% of his Full Tilt winnings to charities around the world. Ever the lawyer, he filed a successful complaint against the WPT regarding their unfair release forms.
Lawyer, engineer, poker player and even occasional poet – there is a section of original poetry in his website – Andy Bloch has probably still got a few more aces up his sleeve, and although he is rumored to be on the lookout for a law-related job, it does not seem very likely that he will make that career change soon.
Click here for Andy Bloch’s interview with Poker News Daily.
