Dan Owen is a rarity at the late stage of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event: he is not in his 20s or 30s. At the tender age of 60, he is attempting to become the oldest Main Event winner since Noel Furlong took the 1999 title at age 61. But, that was in a field of 393 players, not 6,352.

If anyone can handle the pressure of a big hand deep in the Main Event, though, it is someone like Dan Owen. Now retired, Owen was a top executive at the toy company Hasbro, holding positions such as President of the firm’s Playskool subsidiary, President of the Hasbro Toy Group, and Sector Head of the Specialty Products Group. Owen joined Hasbro in 1974 and had a long run at the company, finally leaving in 2000.

In a 2013 interview with PokerNews prior to the final table of Event #56 ($2,500 No Limit Hold’em), Owen said of his poker history, “I was lucky enough to retire when I was 50 years old. And obviously you need hobbies, so I play a lot of gold and I started playing Texas Hold’em. I love the game, so even though I’m not a professional, I play a lot, and I’ve been playing a lot for about 10 or 12 years now.”

Owen finished third in that tournament, banking $312,516, by far the largest live tournament cash of his life, as well as his first ever WSOP cash. He has just two other trips into the money in live tournaments that made it into the low five-figure range. But again, he’s not a professional and considering he was able to retire ten years ago, he’s probably not lamenting his lack of a poker resume.

As he told PokerNews, “Playing poker is just one of the things I do.”

Image courtesy PokerNews