Switching From Chess to Poker Is in the Cards: $1.3 Million

After years of peering at grandmasters over bishops and knights, Dan Harrington made his move.

The retired Downey lawyer exchanged chess pieces for gaming table chips to win the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

Harrington, 49, parlayed $250 into $1.3 million in winnings after a 40-hour card-shuffling marathon that ended Thursday at Binion’s Horseshoe Hotel Casino.

“I was a 100-to-1 underdog,” said Harrington--who admits that those odds were high enough to keep him from betting on himself.

A pair of eights and a queen beat runner-up Howard Goldfarb, a 33-year-old Toronto developer. “He bet $600,000 on a bluff and I called,” Harrington said, as he relaxed in Las Vegas. “The only card that could beat me was an ace--and there were three left. I said, ‘Please don’t let an ace come up.’ It didn’t.”

Harrington credits chess with sharpening his card-playing concentration and stamina. He learned the game from a book so he could play with friends in the campus cafeteria at Suffolk University in Boston, where he studied government and later earned a law degree.

He went on to win state chess championships in Massachusetts and New Jersey before quitting competition.

“It was too intense and brutal on me,” he recalled. “There’s a lot of mental strain and anguish playing in tournaments. I just didn’t want to subject myself to it anymore.”

He tried competitive backgammon after that. But when he won a Washington, D.C., championship and the organizer failed to pay the entire $27,000 prize, Harrington felt rooked.

He turned next to poker--betting that his chess background “would help my ability to focus” on that game. For eight years he traveled to the annual Poker World Series, often as a spectator.

He entered this year’s series after sitting down at a $250 pre-tournament poker game and winning $10,000--which happened to be the exact “buy-in” entry fee for the no-limit Texas hold’em competition.

Other top finishers among the 273 players included two other Southern Californians. Real estate investor Hamid Dastmalchi of San Diego took fourth place and $173,000. Professional poker player Barbara Enright of Van Nuys won fifth place and $114,180, the best showing ever by a woman.

Harrington plans a trip to Hawaii to celebrate his victory. Before leaving, though, he intends to invest his prize in the stock market. “That’s another gambling game I’ve studied for a number of years,” he said with a laugh.

The casino operator offered to pay Harrington’s winnings by bank draft or in poker chips or cash in case he wanted to try a few more hands.

Check, mate, the chessman replied.