HOME AND AWAY/DAN HARRINGTON:Gavin Cummiskey talks to the former poker world champion about his profitable but low-key career
NOT LONG after he won the World Series of Poker in 1995 and, at 50, finally became a household sporting name, Dan Harrington brought the spoils back to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He quickly found his mother pottering around the family home.
“I went home to tell my mother ‘I’m the world poker champion,’ but all she said was, ‘Well, that’s nice Danny, but you know our new cousin Pádraig, he just won the Spanish Open and $80,000’.
“I said, ‘Mom, I won a million dollars! But she never heard me.’
“And he is doing very well on the European Tour. It was my mom who always told me I was related to Pádraig. I began to follow his career a bit after that.”
The exact nature of the family tree is explained.
“My father’s sister was the grandmother of Pádraig. They ended up with the name Harrington because her daughter married a Harrington. That’s how the name stayed the same.”
Harrington’s mother arrived in America on the eve of the Wall Street Crash, with his father following in 1931.
It should be noted this is not a family trying to lay claim to a three-time major champion. No, Dan Harrington freely admits he has never even met either of his distant cousins, Pádraig or NFL quarterback Joey Harrington.
Fame, though, has become an integral part of his life since 1995. Poker’s explosion onto late-night television, the internet and its generally sexed-up persona these days saw to that. And €6 million in career earnings should also keep the wolves from his Santa Monica door.
That three related Harringtons have scaled such heights in such diverse sporting pursuits is curious.
An account of Pádraig’s history is not required, but Joey Harrington was tipped by many to become one of the great modern quarterbacks, only for his career, after a glittering stint in the college game, to falter badly after an ill-fated draft in 2002 by the Detroit Lions. Currently, he is a free agent.
Dan Harrington, on the other hand, is one of the most feared competitors on the felt. Looks can deceive, but his legend precedes him. Most would not recognise a middle-aged man sliding into a seat beside them and donning a Boston Red Sox cap as any concern. Then he starts eating into your chips. Then you do some research on the man.
The stories are plentiful.
Like the time he offered the remaining players on the final table of the World Series an out. Basically, he offered a clean split of the prize money depending on the quantity of chips in each person’s possession, with Harrington providing sound investment advice for free.
“They all said no. One person encouraged the others by saying, ‘This is my one chance to become a millionaire and I’m going to take it’. I said, ‘Well, okay. If that’s how you feel about it’.
“To my way of thinking, you should take a decent amount of money and let it impact your life. Plus, I had just won a tournament for $250,000 so I was already on a good week’s work.”
It smells like intimidation, we suggest. Harrington, as you would expect, doesn’t even blink.
“For me it was just business. I had the second-most chips at the time.”
One by one he picked them off. Seen as a tight, conservative player in the biggest game of his life, Harrington used this reputation to his advantage.
“As I had won the tournament before the World Series, it was the most aggressive I had played in my life up to that time. I was extremely aggressive, taking lots of chances. Most of my opponents became intimidated.
“It was just one of those things where I was playing extremely well and got a fair amount of luck. It all just combined. You hear about sporting events when you get into the zone. For a week I was in that zone. I won two of the major tournaments in the world back-to-back.”
Sound familiar? “I knew what people were doing. I had a real feel for when they would lay their hands down or when they would call or when I could extract the most money out of them.
“I won the three major tournaments in the world in the span of a month, the No Limit Hold’em, the World Series and then the Victoria, which was the European poker championship. I don’t think anyone else has ever done that. It was just one of those things. It happened to me at the right time.”
In 2003 and 2004 he was back on the World Series final table, a testament to his abiding skill after poker went mainstream.
Harrington talks fondly of the Mayfair Club in New York during the 1980s, when some of the greats could be found at the same table night after night, although his cautious nature saw him practising law for much of the 1970s.
“I was always a student of the game and played it in college (alongside a young Bill Gates and Nobel laureate economist Robert C Merton – “he used to try and tell me about his pricing model but I would say, ‘Be quiet and just deal the cards’. People made trillions of dollars from this. He was a very smart guy).
“But I didn’t take it really seriously until about ’81 when I realised I had a little bit of skill at this game. Gradually I began earning more and more and started doing well in tournaments. I guess I never looked back.”
Handling the pressures of a the back nine in a Major or thriving in the QB pocket or staying cool after a massive raise carries similar demands.
What we do know is the Harrington gene can handle it.
“The only way I can describe it is . . . Say you are a bus driver and one day the media turn up and say, ‘Boy! How did you know how to turn that corner?’ You are just doing what you have always done. Yet now they follow every move that you make.”
DAN HARRINGTON
World Poker Champion
Born: December 6th, 1945, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Tournament earnings: exceeding €6 million.
Achievements: Harrington’s greatest achievement is winning the WSoP main event in 1995. He has also made the final table four times (17th in 1987, third in 2003, fourth in 2004). A lawyer, author of acclaimed poker books, Massachusetts State chess champion (1971), World Cup of backgammon champion (1980) and former chief executive of investment company Anchor Loans.
