Andy Bloch – Thinking Poker

Episode 266: Andy Bloch

Andrew — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 20:31:16 +0000

Andy Bloch is a long-time professional poker player and computer programmer who was one of the pioneers at the intersection of these fields. He was also a member of the MIT Blackjack team that was the subject of Bringing Down the House and Twenty-One and an owner of Full Tilt Poker. His current project is ESC Games.

Bloch discussed Full Tilt Poker and Black Friday at length with Diamond Flush Poker. We discussed the subject, and The Lederer Files, with Matt Parvis on Episode 7.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
11:48 – Strategy
34:40 – Andy Bloch

Visualizing An Opponent’s Range

Andrew — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 04:15:44 +0000

A lot of you probably get these “pro tip” e-mails from Full Tilt from time to time. I’ve glanced at a few and they were always very rudimentary and sometimes wrong. The title of this one caught my eye, though, and while it’s not a very sophisticated concept, it’s well-executed:

Andy Bloch on “Visualizing an Opponent’s Range”

This is essentially what I’m visualizing as I play a hand: a little bubble floating over my opponent’s head that contains an ever-narrowing range of hands. In fact, I think may borrow this technique for a video or two of my own.

Ivey at 99:1 to Win It All?

Andrew — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:18:46 +0000

Wicked Chops Poker is reporting that, with 2400 players left in the main event, Phil Ivey accepted a $20K wager from Andy Bloch at 99:1 that he would win the main event. Now that he’s made the final table, Bloch’s got to be sweating the $2 million loss.

My first reaction was that, this close call notwithstanding, this was a pretty good spot for Bloch. Granted everything I’ve heard about Ivey is that he’s both incredibly good at poker and insanely intimidating in person, but is he really 24 times more likely than the average player to take it down? The one thing I don’t know, which would make a big difference, is what his chip stack was like at the time. I guess if he was already at like three times the average when he took the bet, it might not be so unreasonable to think he’d close out eight times as often as anyone else sitting on a stack that big.

Even against bad players in a great structure, that’s an awfully huge edge. Then again, if Ivey does make it to the final four with a decent stack, I imagine he takes it down a large percentage of the time.

What do you think? Was Ivey getting the best of Bloch when he took 99:1?