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Real Casinos > Poker Player Profiles > Dan Harrington
Dan Harrington
Few players in the poker world can achieve greatness the
same way that Dan Harrington has. While
he is considered to be one of the best in the game today, he is also one of the
most cautious and tight players as well.
While his playing style has been all to much criticized over the years
it has certainly worked for him in the long run. Born in 1945, Harrington began his career as
a chess master and champion backgammon player as well. His has competed professionally in both of
these sports and achieved a fair amount of success. Harrington has a love for all games that
require the open thought process and he has found that poker combines all of
the best that every game has to offer.
He was part of an MIT excursion that devised the way to beat roulette
for which he was banned from many casinos.
This did not last long as he turned his attention to poker and he can
boast that he has played against some famous people including Microsoft icon
Bill Gates, who is actually a formidable poker player in his own right.
During the middle of the 1980’s he managed to
play at the Mayfair club and met and matched
several poker players that would go on to be champions like Howard “The
Professor” Lederer and Erik Siedel. He
would come away from this time with a stern and vast knowledge of the game that
would serve him well in the long run.
Harrington is known as one of the most tight players in the game
today. He is not one to take great risks
and is often found to be overly cautious when it comes to the games that he
enters. Most people in the world would
find this type of play maddening but to Harrington it is the best method. His slow style and overall control during
play throws off the concentration of the other players and he uses that to his
advantage.
The
1995 World Series of Poker would be the greatest achievement for Harrington as
he took the bracelet in the main event for over one million dollars. This would be a long fought battle for
Harrington and he used his knowledge of chess to make the win. Because of his play he managed to get the
other player to go all in thinking that Harrington was bluffing and in the end
the hand that he held was the best. This
was a matter of reading the other players and Harrington is known as the master
of this aspect of poker in all forms.
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