19 Feb
MIT blackjack legend and former Full Tilt pro Andy Bloch will be auctioning off his Las Vegas mansion next week, the $8million estate coming with incredible views of the Nevada countryside
The luxury home in the hills has been on the market for quite some time, and Bloch hopes the auction will finally see someone take it off his hands, the 6-bedroom mansion just 20-minutes’ drive from downtown Vegas.
While Bloch has an enviable poker record – more than $5million in tournament earnings and a WSOP gold bracelet to his name – it was arguably his role in the MIT blackjack run that made him most famous.
Recruited to a team of crack card-counters, Bloch and his MIT colleagues took the casinos for an expensive ride over a decade of blackjack playing.
Bloch’s share was about $½million over six years, telling one interviewer:
“Some I earned as a player and some as an investor.” During this time he states that “I never got beaten up. I got grabbed, I got handcuffed, I got arrested on trumped-up charges or false accusations of cheating.”
Pretty soon poker took over as his main career as the casinos eventually cottoned on to the MIT scheme, but the blackjack-counting escapades were made into a Hollywood movie – titled 21 – starring Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne.
Getting back to his mansion-selling, Bloch’s home is described as ‘10,591 square feet of uninhibited luxury including an elevator, wet bar, and secret lounge areas’, according to Concierge Auctions.
The bidding starts on February 25th, so if you have the best part of $10million to spare, you could soon be the proud owner of a piece of gambling history!
