Andy Bloch has been into poker full time sins 1992. He has gained enormous reputation and is currently one of the Full Tilt Poker pros.

However, in a recent meet with students from the University of Nevada Las Vegas the focus was not on poker but on blackjack.

Because prior to becoming a poker pro Bloch was a member of the notorious MIT Blackjack Team that had exploited card counting and milked Vegas casinos for over ten years. The discussion naturally veered to the recently released Hollywood movie ‘21’ that was based on the MIT Blackjack Team and the students wanted to know how accurately was the real life depicted in the reel life. And Bloch obliged.



The MIT Blackjack Team members had used both coded words and hand signals to communicate with each other at the high stakes blackjack tables. Bloch revealed that by and large the coded words used in the film were true to real life but the hand signals had been considerably altered. Scenes from ‘21’ were screened during the discussion and one of the scenes got Bloch excited. The scene showed one of the Blackjack Team stealing freebies. Bloch recalled how a member had actually taken a shield from a casino back to MIT and had hung it up on his dormitory wall.

Another scene played showed the Blackjack Team members being given false identities. Bloch explained that only those who played the high rollers at the tables were given false identities. The support members like the spotters functioned in their own names. Bloch also informed the students that it was much easier to create false identities at that time because little identification was required. 

Bloch also discussed some interesting aspects of the MIT Blackjack Team not related to the movie. He said that tipping the dealers was always a big problem. Tips are perceived to be as too big or as too little. The team could not afford to leave large tips because it cut into their profits because unlike individual players the MIT Blackjack Team had overheads to support. Tipping too little aroused suspicion because high rollers were usually generous after large wins. The students wanted to know that with so much gambling being done by the MIT Blackjack Team, did the members suffer from problem gambling. Bloch replied that the focus for the team was beating the house. And this depended on teamwork and card counting. Without these twin advantages gambling was not very attractive to the team members.

Bloch also discussed his poker career. A little known fact about him is that he was playing poker before he joined the MIT Blackjack Team. He was playing poker in Boston when a team member observed him and asked him to join them. Bloch had a humorous incident to reveal about televised poker tournaments. Friends and relatives following tournaments on television would call him up to wish him well, without realizing that the tournament was over and that he had been knocked out that day.