Gus Hansen
Gus Hansen, from Copenhagen,
Denmark, is probably most well-known for his
hyper-aggressive gambling playing style. "The Great
Dane" originally began his skill game career with
backgammon in his native country and this fast-action
game most likely had an influence on his style as a
poker player. He began playing poker seriously in 1997
when he got involved in the ring games offered at The
Mirage in Las Vegas.
Hansen was propelled into
the poker limelight with his win at the first-ever
World Poker Tour event: the 2003 Five Diamond World
Poker Classic at the Bellagio. He picked up nearly
$600,000 for the win. Hansen mostly gained his notoriety
for excellent WPT appearances. He went on to win 2 more
WPT titles within the next year: the 2003 L.A. Poker
Classic and the 2004
PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. Combined, this was
almost another $1 million in prize money. The following
season, he finished 3rd at the WPT Shooting Star
Championship at Bay 101.
Perhaps even more impressive
to me was his win of the inaugural
Poker Superstars Invitational tournament on FSN.
This was a $400,000 buy-in event consisting of 8 of the
best poker players in the world: Doyle Brunson, Chip
Reese, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Howard Lederer, T.J.
Cloutier, Johnny Chan, and Gus Hansen. Rather than
playing a single tournament, this took place as a
multiple-event format so players would be rewarded for
repeat performances. Against an almost flawless field of
poker legends, Gus Hansen dominated from day 1.
Gus Hansen probably garners
the most frustration around the table from both amateurs
and seasoned professionals because of his unpredictable
aggressive style. He is known to play 7-3 suited the
same as he would pocket Aces, making him virtually
unreadable to his opponents. He loves to see a lot of
flops, and he loves to take the lead with his aggressive
style upfront. The advantage of playing all sorts of
hands the same way is that his opponents will often
choose the time that he does have a monster to try and
break him. Even when he does play rags, he can baffle
his opponents when he connects, cracking big hands and
looking like he just got lucky. It's sort of reminiscent
of the classic Doyle Brunson strategy on steroids.
After a huge amount of
success at big tournaments, we haven't heard a lot from
"The Great Dane" for a while now. Perhaps he is just
concentrating on cash games (which will often earn these
professionals a lot more than tournament winnings) but I
expect that we'll see more of this aggressive tournament
specialist. He is fun to watch at the table with his
laid-back personality and shark-like smile. You can
catch him most often on WPT reruns riffling his chips
and confusing his opponents.
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