Dan Harrington, originally uploaded by pokerwire.
Dan Harrington is a professional poker player. Dan Harrington was born December 6, 1945 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dan Harrington chose his own nickname "Action Dan" even though he is known for being a tight conservative player. Dan Harrington is a distant cousin to both professional golfer Pádraig Harrington and NFL quarterback Joey Harrington.
Currently residing in Santa Monica, California, Dan Harrington is a former champion backgammon player, U.S. chess master (he won the 1971 Massachusetts State Chess Championship), and bankruptcy lawyer. During his time at Suffolk University, Dan Harrington was part of an MIT team that gained an advantage over casinos at roulette. Shortly after the MIT team disbanded he was part of a different one which specialized in blackjack. Dan Harrington also played poker against Bill Gates while Gates was at Harvard. Some of his earlier poker experience came from the Mayfair Club in the mid-1980s where he played with Howard Lederer, Steve Zolotow, and Erik Seidel. In addition to being a successful professional poker player, Dan Harrington also works in real estate and the stock market.
Sporting his iconic green Boston Red Sox cap, Dan Harrington is known as a crafty, tight-aggressive player, employing starting hand standards that are stricter than most professionals. When Dan Harrington reached the final table at the 1995 main event, he set the runner-up, Howard Goldfarb, to bluff for all his chips in the final hand. According to Barry Greenstein,
“ When Dan made it to the final table of the 1995 World Series of Poker, he proposed a nine-way settlement to the other players. He explained how they would each get enough money that they could invest it and be rich. Chuck Thompson, one of the players[...], rejected the idea and told the other players that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a million dollars. One by one, as each player got knocked out, Dan tried to sell the idea, even offering investment counseling. There were no takers and eventually Dan came away with the full million. ”
His solid play allows him to make it to many final tables at large events. Dan Harrington won the World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event in 1995 for $1,000,000 and made three other main event final tables, placing 6th in 1987 for $43,750, 3rd (out of 839 players) in 2003 for $650,000, and 4th (out of 2,576 players) in 2004 for $1,500,000
The same year as his main event win, Dan Harrington also won a bracelet in the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em event for $249,000 and the Seven-card stud event at European Poker Open in London. Dan Harrington made his first final table at the World Poker Tour (WPT) in 2005, winning $620,730 for his second place finish to Minh Ly in the Doyle Brunson North American Championship. In 2007, Dan Harrington won the Legends of Poker for a prize of $1,634,865.
As of 2008, Dan Harrington live tournament winnings exceed $6,500,000.
Dan Harrington, Doyle Brunson, Carlos Mortensen, Scotty Nguyen and Joe Hachem are the only five people to have won the World Series of Poker Main Event and a World Poker Tour title.
Dan Harrington has written (co-authored with Bill Robertie) three popular books on tournament poker and two books on cash no-limit games, all published by Two Plus Two Publishing:
Harrington on Hold'em: Volume I: Strategic Play
Harrington on Hold'em: Volume II: The Endgame
Harrington on Hold'em: Volume III: The Workbook
Harrington on Cash Games, Volume I: How to Play No-Limit Hold 'em Cash Games
Harrington on Cash Games, Volume II: How to Play No-Limit Hold 'em Cash Games
Dan Harrington, with his "Harrington on Hold 'em" book series; has given the amateur poker player, a deep insight into the mind of a professional poker player. The release of these books dovetailed perfectly with the rise of internet poker,and the explosion of interest in the game, brought on by televised broadcasts of The World Series of Poker and other high stake events. The resulting impact of these books on the amateur game cannot be understated. It is common to find internet players arguing with each other as to whether or not a particular move was justified, and often the point of reference is the strategy outlined by Harrington.
The core of the strategy is a tight conservative game that becomes steadily more aggressive in response to the increasing blinds(forced bets). In tournament poker everyone starts with the same number of chips, and play begins with blind bets that are relatively small compared to the stacks of the players. Periodically (from 5-15 and sometimes 30 minutes in an internet game, or 1-2 hours in a live game) the blinds bets increase. The resulting increase forces players to act or risk being "Blinded off", or losing all of the chips by playing too conservatively.
Poker math involves the computation of pot odds, which is taking the size of a potential bet in ratio to the size of the current pot, and comparing that to your odds of hitting a winning hand. Harrington shows that with the increasing blinds, moves that would seem stupid or crazy in a cash game, can be perfectly justified mathematically. Along with this strategy the book series details ways to think about poker concepts like hand analysis, bluffing, slowplaying, and making decisions based on the range of hands an opponent might hold, as opposed to trying to guess at a specific hand.
Dan Harrington states in the book series many times, that the decisions he makes could be argued differently, but with his tournament strategy he has clarified what it is that is being argued about, and made the game more accessible to the amateur player.
World Series of Poker bracelets
Year Tournament Prize (US$)
1995 $2,500 No Limit Hold'em $249,000
1995 $10,000 No Limit Hold'em World Championship $1,000,000