Poker Tales - Gus Hansen, There and Back Again

Gus Hansen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1974. He has been a professional gambler for many years and it is well-known that he was a tennis player at a young age and one of the best backgammon players for some years. In 1997, Gus turned to playing poker professionally and has been one of the biggest names in the industry since.

In the early 2000s, young Gus brought a new style to the tournament poker felt and started crushing with it. The hyper aggressive style of the Danish pro was too much for the rock tight tournament players at the time and in 2002 and 2003 Gus managed to win two WPT titles and dominate the tournament circuit altogether.

In 2004, Gus won a $7,500 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure event for $455,780 and kept the gravy train going with a 2007 win at the Aussie Millions and another at the 2008 Sixth Annual Five Star World Poker Classic, the latter being the biggest of his career. In 2010, the Great Dane finally won his first WSOP bracelet in London, winning the $10,000 Heads Up High Roller.

Gus has had tremendous success at the live tournament circuit, and combined with various business ventures he was involved with, he made a name and considerable wealth for himself. But just as his rise in the live tournament world was fast and explosive, so too was his harsh downfall at the online poker tables on Full Tilt Poker.

The story of his online play started back in 2006 when he was a Team Full Tilt pro. For the first several years the Dane managed to remain about break even, but a horrible 2009 saw him lose over $10 million at one point. By the end of 2011, he managed to mitigate his losses to only $3.2 million. But Black Friday hit earlier in the year and Gus was unable to play on Full Tilt Poker.

In late 2012, Pokerstars' parent company bought out Full Tilt Poker and made it possible to play on the platform once more. This, of course, meant that the high stakes games would also restart. The return of high stakes action on FTP has probably been one of the least fortunate things in the life of Hansen as his losses on FTP now stand at $20.47 million and counting, making him by far online poker’s biggest all time loser. Gus has been one of the few players online who would take on anyone and play any game, and can be seen playing on a variety of tables ranging from No Limit Hold'em and Pot Limit Omaha to the volatile 2-7 Triple Draw games.

The high stakes community now often refers to Gus as one of the biggest whales in the world and it remains unclear why a player who had been dominating the live circuit for so many years is almost helpless online. We expect to see much more of Gus Hansen in 2015 and he is very likely to join in the online action once more. Hopefully for him this will be a turnaround year and perhaps we can finally see Gus on the year’s biggest winners list.