Whether Gus Hansen is more of a poker player or a gambler is up to you to decide. He considers himself a professional gambler though, and he doesn’t shy away from sports betting and props on different personal athletic abilities of his.
While he is one of the most successful poker players on television, Hansen has paid his dues to Lady Luck. He admitted losing several million dollars in high stakes cash games and his sports betting is a perpetual leak in his bankroll, but he says he just can’t quit it.
Born in 1974, in Copenhagen, Denmark, Hansen was a sports-freak while growing up. His highly competitive nature could only find fulfillment in sports. He played a variety of sports and became outstandingly successful in tennis and backgammon.
He began playing poker professionally in 1997, but back then he still had dreams of making it big as a backgammon player. He moved to New York in 2000 to play professional backgammon there, but the move proved to be an initial disappointment. The backgammon scene was way too small for Gus’ taste, so poker soon waltzed into the picture. He had played poker before too. Back in 1993, when he was an exchange student, he played at the Ocean View Card Room in Santa Cruz, where he’d learned from a rounder who had an aggressive and impossible to read style. Word has it, that’s why Hansen himself is capable of betting and raising on just about any two pocket cards.
Despite being an outstanding tournament player, Gus Hansen is yet to take down a WSOP golden bracelet. Even though he had a decent run in this year’s Big Dance and in several other side-events as well, he failed to break the ice.
His best Main Event finish came in 2007, when he reached 61st place, and took down a prize of $154,194.
The WPT is a different matter. Hansen is a true record-holder there, being the only player ever to garner no fewer than 3 WPT titles. He has 9 WPT money finishes.
In 2006, Hansen won the EPM’s London All Star Challenge, taking home $102k. He also won the first Poker Superstars invitational tourney, for $1 million.
He is the player who took down the biggest single pot in the history of High Stakes Poker, when his pocket 5s got the better of Negreanu’s pocket 6s, after Negreanu had hit trips and he improved to quads.
Even though he makes much more than three dozen decent livings off his play alone, Hansen has been pretty successful away from the green felt too. In 2003, he launched a poker room, (pokerchamps.com) where he was a partner as well as the house pro. The room was sold to Betfair in 2005, for the breath-taking sum of $15 million, which probably meant a pretty juicy share for the Great Dane too.
In 2005, he launched a series of instructional DVDs.
His latest online venture is called ThePlayr.com, and it is a community and blog site.
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