“Action” Dan Harrington

Although many poker players enjoy their time in the poker celebrity spotlight, some of the best in the world stay as far away from it as they can. Since he was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1945, Dan Harrington has been in action. While he was growing up, he became a formidable chess player winning state championships in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

When chess failed to provide a sufficient income for Harrington, he began to study law at Suffolk Law School in Boston. In addition to a legal education, he gained an education in games like backgammon, poker, and blackjack. After joining an organized roulette team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dan quickly learned to find any edge he could while gambling. The roulette team soon took a back seat to blackjack team and not too long after, struck out on his own as a professional backgammon player.

Harrington won the World Cup of Backgammon in 1981 and would later put his ability to strategize to the test when he began playing poker more seriously. After learning backgammon from one of the games best, Bill Robertie, there seemed no more fitting place for Action Dan to cut his poker teeth than the Mayfair Club in New York City. Along with Howard Lederer, Steve Zolotow, Erik Seidel, Jason Lester and Mickey Appleman (who by the way have over $18,000,000 in career tournament winnings, along with 17 World Series of Poker bracelets) Harrington would grind hour after hour, night after night, turning his game into what it is today.

Adding over $6,000,000 and two W.S.O.P. bracelets of his own to those Mayfair Club statistics, Action Dan Harrington went on to win the W.S.O.P. Main Event in 1995. Years later Dan would joke about calling his mother to tell her about his $1,000,000 win, only to hear her ask him if he’d heard about his cousin Padraig, of Irish descent, earning $90,000 in his own golf tournament.

In addition to being one of the most acclaimed tournament players in history, Action Dan is also one of the most popular gambling authors to ever write about the game of No Limit Hold ‘em. In 2004, Harrington teamed up with his old backgammon mentor Bill Robertie to co-write the popular tournament guide “Harrington on Hold ‘em Volume One.” Since then, volumes two and three have become what should be staples on any serious poker players gambling bookshelf.