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At the world series of poker in Las Vegas, the game was No-Limit Texas Hold'em.

At the European Poker Championship in London, the game was Seven Card Stud.

In both games, the results were the same: Dan Harrington, a 50-year-old former bankruptcy lawyer, won the 1995 championships and the right to claim the title of undisputed heavyweight poker champion of the world -- along with a cool $1.25 million for the two tournaments. For Harrington, a big, ruddy Irishman with a no-nonsense Boston accent, the two titles represent the culmination of a lifetime of playing -- and winning -- at games that require confident character, sharp intellect, deft strategy, and relentless execution: in other words, the attributes of a successful business leader.

As a younger man, Harrington excelled first at chess -- winning state championships in New Jersey and Massachusetts -- and then at backgammon -- quitting only after winning a $27,000 championship prize, half of which the organizer failed to pay. He joined forces with a small "Mission Impossible" team that relied on MIT-derived mathematical formulas to generate precise calculations for winning at roulette. They enjoyed a 40% edge on each spin -- until the Sands Hotel Casino in Atlantic City caught them.

As an undergraduate at Boston's Suffolk University, Harrington took up poker. He vaguely remembers playing in a friendly game with two young Harvard students: Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Six years ago he moved to Los Angeles, where legal card rooms had just been permitted to diversify from draw poker to fancier versions favored by serious gamblers, such as Texas Hold'em (a game where each player gets two cards down, and five cards go in the middle, and each player bets on the best five-card poker hand). Now Harrington has moved his legal residence to Las Vegas -- not to be closer to the casinos, but to escape California's state income tax that claims 11% of his winnings.

Fast Company visited the reigning world poker champ at his sprawling five-bedroom home, which seems to serve as an informal boarding house for Harrington's itinerant gambling buddies. A chess board is set up next to the computer that Harrington uses to track his stock positions. The bookshelves are filled with business texts -- these days, Harrington spends more time playing the stock market and investing in real estate than playing cards. Says Harrington, "I'm on a learning curve in real estate. But I know one thing: I'm very good at learning games and playing them. And real estate, the stock market -- it's all the same as far as I'm concerned. There's hardly any difference."

1. It's All Character

It's not a matter of being brilliant. It's just a matter of character. That's all it is. You have the discipline to draw back when you see that your strategy is incorrect. That's the kernel of the idea in gambling: it's the discipline to keep your losses down and not to let your losses affect you. It's the same in business. It's a percentage game. You don't win 100% of the time. You do something adequate, you stay in the game, and you keep playing. You win a little bit more than you lose, and when you lose, you lose less. You're going to win eventually. You may not win the whole world, you may not even be an extremely high producer. But you're going to be a winner. It sounds simple. It is just so hard to execute. Execute extremely well and you'll win. That's why Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach, used to spend eight hours on one sweep, just one play. Do the simple blocking and tackling and the other stuff will take care of itself. It's the same in gambling and in business. You get the basics and you'll win. You don't have to be some super-visionary.