He’s happy with hand life has dealt

Orange County has lots of millionaires. Not many of them have pink hair. And not many of them made their million in five days sitting at a table.

But such is the upside of the professional poker player, and the latest to be touched by the gods is Gavin Griffin of Fullerton. And what better place to be touched than Monte Carlo, where two weeks ago Griffin was the last player seated in the field of 706 and won the $2.4-million first prize.

Not bad for a 25-year-old who’d never been to Europe before.

I’ve written about my fascination with poker, how I like the thrill of the game while lacking any of the qualities needed to play it well. So, I’ve become a watcher, seldom missing a TV event and coming to recognize poker players on sight as quickly as baseball players.

I remember Griffin in 2004 being (at the time) the youngest winner ever of a World Series of Poker event. Lo and behold, here he is on the phone Monday from Las Vegas where he’d just busted out of a tournament at the Bellagio.

“It was a quick day today,” he says. “Last night I played for nine hours with the same result that I had in about an hour today.” That result was to go broke in both tournaments, which are leading up to a biggie this weekend, the World Poker Tour championship.

I don’t sleep when I lose $40 playing with friends. How in the heck do these guys handle it?

“I guess after playing a pretty long time,” Griffin says, “it’s just something you get used to. The first few times I played tournaments, every time there was a big situation, my heart would start racing and I’d get a little nervous, but after playing hundreds and maybe even thousands of tournaments, it just doesn’t really affect me now. You kind of build up an immunity toward it. The money’s in, I’m going to win or not, there’s nothing I can do about it, so why worry about it.”

He jokes that it sometimes bugs his girlfriend, who’s more like the rest of us: She’s a worrier.

Griffin says he used to be an emotional athlete, but when he took that same temperament to the poker table, he realized “that’s a pretty bad trait for a poker player. You have to be almost completely emotionless.”

And that’s kind of how it was, he says, when he won the European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo. On the final hand of the Texas Hold-em tournament, Griffin played his king and a five; his opponent played a seven and a four and made a big raise early, hoping to bluff Griffin off the hand. Five subsequent “community” cards determine the winner in Texas Hold-em, and after the fourth card was turned over, Griffin was behind his opponent’s pair of fours. The next card would determine whether Griffin would win the tournament or be down to about $500,000 in chips to his opponent’s $10 million.

I would have needed a potty break.

Griffin says he was figuring which cards could help him and, if he lost the hand, how tough it would be to overcome the huge disadvantage.

The final card was another king, giving him the win. Because a sponsor had paid for his $13,000 buy-in, Griffin actually split the $2.4-million first prize with his backer.

Griffin is an Illinois native who dropped out of college to enter the world of felt tables and high anxiety. He moved to Fullerton last summer and lives with an Italian greyhound and two cats.

Now that he’s seen and conquered Monte Carlo, can Orange County possibly keep him entertained?

“I’m actually mostly a homebody,” he says. “I don’t really go out clubbing and all that kind of stuff. I’m very quiet, very laid back. I like to hang out at home, watch movies, stuff like that. I love the pace of Orange County and, of course, the weather.”

And the bubblegum-pink hair? A little showy, a sign of a guy a bit full of himself?

Hardly. His girlfriend had breast cancer a few years ago, and Griffin told her he’d walk in September’s Avon Walk for Breast Cancer charity in L.A. County. He also agreed to wear the logo of an online poker site at the Monte Carlo event in exchange for it donating $15,000 to the cause. The company also opened an account on its website for other players to donate, promising to match whatever they pledged.

Bottom line: $30,000 pledged to this year’s walk.

So, the pink hair -- the widely recognized color associated with breast cancer awareness -- will stay for a while, Griffin says.

As will the career. “I don’t play as many tournaments as a lot of people,” he says, “so I don’t think I’ll have problems getting burned out. But I don’t expect to be playing when I’m 75. At least, not seriously. Maybe when I’m 50 or so, I imagine maybe I’ll semi-retire or whatever. So many people have jobs they’re successful at that they don’t like. I love to play poker. I make a pretty good living, and I’m doing what I really love to do.”

Still, there was that long drive back Monday to Orange County from Las Vegas after busting out. He told me early Monday afternoon he’d probably wait a few hours to miss rush hour traffic here.

The Vegas-to-O.C. drive gives a man time to think.

Like why he survived for only an hour in Monday’s event. Like why he busted out the night before.

And how, at 25, he might spend $1.2 million.

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Dana Parson can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns: www.latimes.com/parsons