“Action” Dan Harrington is not only an excellent poker player but also a very competitive and impressive backgammon and chess player, who has had a lot of experience and success playing the latter two games. He was the winner of two state championships in chess in New Jersey and Massachusetts. He also was the winner of the World Cup of Backgammon in the early 1980s. Dan Harrington has been equally impressive, if not more so, on the poker felt.
Harrington was a WSOP Main Event champion in 1995. He has made it to the event’s final table four times where he placed fourth in 2000, third in 2003, first in 1995 as stated above, and 17th in 1987. He is believed to have amassed more than $6 million in winnings over the length of his career.
Action Harrington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 6th 1945. His first game of choice however, was not poker but chess. He excelled at it and won two state championships.
Harrington would go on and attend law school in Boston where he continued to play chess as well as poker and backgammon. He would soon join a MIT team that was exceptional at roulette, somehow finding a way to grab the advantage over the casino. He also played on a Blackjack team around the same time.
While he was still an excellent chess player and enjoyed playing poker, he was beginning to seriously concentrate on Backgammon, eventually becoming a very good player. His mentor and instructor was Bill Robertie, who had won the world championship in Backgammon, twice. Harrington would later quit the game and begin to take up poker seriously.
After he began to focus on poker more seriously he began to spend time at the Mayfair Club in New York City. The club was frequented by what would be one day be an impressive roster of poker stars during this time.
He would soon enter his first WSOP Main Event tournament and would perform quite well, winning more than $43,000 and placing sixth. In 1995 he had excellent year. He competed in a WSOP $2500 No limit Hold’em event, took home his first bracelet in the Main Event, earning himself a cool $1,000,000.
Though 1995 was an impressive year for Harrington by any standards, it would be a while before he would experience such success. However, he continued to still play and was able to win some smaller, less prestigious events.
In 2003 he was back. He finished third in 2003 WSOP Main Event and won $650,000. He finished fourth in the 2004 WSOP Main Event and won $1.5 million. He was especially impressive in 2007 at the WPT Legends of Poker tournament where he was able to win the event and take home the top prize of $1.6 million. Besides being a great poker player Dan Harrington is also a successful author, co-writing three books on poker with his one-time mentor, Bill Robertie.
