“Action Dan” Harrington was born Dec. 6th, 1945 in the eastern United States - Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dan Harringtons success in life both in and out of poker have led him to eventually settle in the West - Santa Monica, California.
Before playing poker professionally, Dan was a successful Chess Master and a professional Backgammon player as well. Dan won the 1971 Massachusetts Chess Championship, and studied at Suffolk University. Dan made his first pile of money as a bankruptcy lawyer, but is a very successful real estate investor and stock market speculator.
While not much is known around the story of Dan Harrington’s involvement with the famous MIT gambling teams, he has acknowledged that he was first a part of a winning Roulette team and later one of the more famous Blackjack teams.
In the 1980’s, Dan honed his poker skills at the Mayfair Club in New York, where he had first started playing highstakes backgammon. He quickly saw the money his fellow backgammon players were making switching over to poker, and switched his main game to poker where he quickly excelled while playing the best (many of whom still are).
Dan Harrington is well known for being a tight poker player, capable of making moves on different levels of thinking but strictly abiding by solid starting hand requirements. Dan has made a jaw-dropping four World Series Of Poker Main Event Final Tables - including back to back appearances in 2003 and 2004 which is widely considered to be one of the greatest accomplishments in WSOP history considering the explosion of size in fields of entrants at the WSOP.
A famous story about Dan’s World Series Of Poker Main Event win in 1995 started when the play had left just nine men standing (or sitting as it may have it). Dan, being the risk adverse player he is well known as proposed a nine way chop to the prize pool. Using his experience as a lawyer, Dan Harrington made the case that they all would walk away with enough money to get rich through investment. When the other players refused, arguing that this was a once in a lifetime chance to be a millionaire - Dan didn’t give up. As each player was knocked out, he would propose the chop again. Ultimately, Dan went home the sole millionaire that day.
Poker Achievements
Dan has two World Series Of Poker Bracelets (both in the same year), and one World Poker Tour win.
1995 WSOP Main Event - 1st $1,000,000
1995 WSOP $2,500 No Limit Hold’em - 1st $249,000
2007 WPT Lengends Of Poker - 1st $1,634,865
Winning both the WSOP Main Event and a World Poker Tour title puts Dan Harrington into a rather elite club. Dan joins only 4 other players in the elite club of five to have done this - Doyle Brunson, Scotty Nguyen, Joe Hachem, and Carlos Mortenson.
Dan Harrington The Author
Never one to miss a profitable oppurtunity, Dan Harrington took the poker boom by storm by exposing his winning style of poker in several infamous books that are now considered essential to any serious poker players library.
His “Harrington On Hold’em” series on tournament poker is a three volume set that is widely credited as changing the game in tournament poker. He introduced a new concept of stack size consideration, called ICM. Most seasoned tournament veterans will quickly concede that the tournament atmosphere has become considerably tougher since the introduction of some of his tournament strategies to the general market.
In 2008, Dan Harrington changed the game once again by introduction his series on No Limit Cash Games - highly anticipated by the poker community and at the time of this writing very well received and respected.
In an interesting fun fact, Dan Harrington is actually a second cousin of professional football player Joey Harrington.