Jennifer Harman

Jennifer Harman
Age: 30-something.
Height: about 5’ 2”
Occupation: Poker.
Favorite breakfast dish: Eating the competition.

Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Jennifer Harman is perhaps the best female poker player today. When this petite blonde sashays around the poker tables, you would be pardoned to mistake her as somebody’s friend who has come to enjoy the fun. But when she sits next to you with that serious, concentrated air of a poker pro, pulling the chair and shuffling the chips before her – you would be pardoned to have skipped a beat. Well, ladies and gentlemen, meet Jennifer Harman. Ranked 3rd in the women’s all-time money list, and owner of two World Series of Poker bracelets.

Her training in poker began there a tiny tot, when she would watch her father and his friends spending long hours brooding over the stack of cards on the dining table in their den.

Jennifer earned her reputation playing ring games. One day, she built courage enough to make for one of the poker tables that played $20-$40. The first game, she won handily to the applause of the men around her. Emboldened, she continued, however, she stagnated between the $20-$40 and $50-$100 games for as much as seven years. One fine morning, however, she moved to the $75-$150 tables, determined to move up the ladder. It still took her another eight years to reach the $200-$400 range. This tells a lot about this cautious person. Now you will find her on any given evening at the Bellagio in a $2000-4000 game.

Her name began to be taken with awe when she tried her luck at the WSOP $2,500 Hold’em Pot Limit in 1996, reaching the 6th position with $15,750 in hand. Just two days later, she beat scores of the biggies to come 16th in the WSOP $2,500 No Limit Hold’em game, taking home $5,340.

Two years later, 1999 saw her again at the tables, and this time she did not disappoint her growing number of fans with a 13th-position-win in the WSOP $1,500 Limit Hold’em game. But it was when she topped the rankings in the WSOP $5,000 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven game in 2000 that she really let her hair down and celebrated.

Jennifer has been consistently in the news ever since. Her next big moment of fame was in 2002, when she beat the competition hollow to pick up $221,440 in the WSOP $5,000 Limit Hold’em event.

Another high point of her career thus far has been the 2nd rank in the $10,000 WSOP Circuit Championship in March 2005, where she played the No Limit Hold’em. This was followed by a 3rd position in the WSOP $2,000 Seven card Stud Hi/Lo event just three months later. Till date, she has two WSOP bracelets in hand, and has accumulated a cool $1,425,139, all of it by playing poker.

In the midst of all this hurly-burly of poker tournaments and championships, Jennifer took time off to get married to her sweetheart, Marco Traniello. Her busy schedule does not leave her enough time to think about having children, but she is determined to fulfill her dream of raising a family and prove to be a good wife and mother.

She took a year out of poker to have major surgery, spending the final event of this year's World Series undergoing a kidney transplant, the kidney donated by her niece. Jennifer is putting together the "Jen Harman Challenge" to raise awareness about the importance of donating organs.