Wherever Gus Hansen is on the planet, he's never more than arm's length away from his one true love - Full Tilt Poker.
And few could find fault with his infatuation: Another epic 24 hours at the Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha tables last week resulted in yet another million dollar payout for the Great Dane - in this case from the depths of Australia, where he's been promoting the Australian Poker League.
He didn't take a lot of huge hands, keeping his opponents' stacks in check for most of the session according to the Web site highstakesdb.com. But the bulk of his winnings came from PLO regulars KaiBuxxe, Jumper17 and DaFool - who've been tearing up the PLO tables this month themselves - in a few key hands. Download poker wallpapers.
The biggest pot was for $101k against KaiBuxxe (reportedly Niki Jedlicka, an Austrian pro), with Hansen hitting runner-runner jacks to make quads and best kaibuxxe's flopped flush and all-in push before the turn. Women poker.
Hansen also took a nice $88,000 haul from wins_pot, hitting his flush on the river to beat wins_pot's straight.
The million-dollar day was Hansen's second record-setting session in less than two months. Despite some middling 2007 World Series of Poker results - although he came on strong for a 61st-place Main Event finish - Hansen's WSOP would likely have been disappointing for him, save for another killer session on Full Tilt early in June.
This week's payout capped a big week in general for Hansen, which saw him take an additional $167k from another high-stakes regular at Full Tilt, "Ziigmund" (reportedly Finnish pro Ilari Sahamies) - even though Hansen may have come out the worse for wear in the chat box.
Among the slags Ziigmund threw Hansen's way while they played: "gus is fish," "gus is singer from romania," and the more-fully fleshed out dis "czech rebuplic singer from eurovision gay bar GUSTAV HANSEN."
Hansen bit his lip for the most part, with a simple "no i dont think so," in reply to the eurovision crack and another simple "no thx," when Ziigmund offered up a coin flip for $280k. Play $500 match poker bonus.
Next up for Hansen, according to his blog: a gig as a commentator for the World Series of Backgammon in London. He also says he's signed on already for all three events of the inaugural WSOP Europe and will play the opening EPT event in Barcelona.
For more on the latest online exploits of Hansen and all the other Full Tilt Poker high-rollers, visit www.highstakesdb.com. Stay tuned to our poker blog for latest updates.
Note: As is always the case in the high-stakes online poker world, Hansen was struck by the easy come, easy go bullet yesterday, handing $515k right back to his opponents - including KaiBuxxe and fellow poker pro Nenad Medic - at the Full Tilt PLO tables.
Gus Hansen is going back to backgammon, but not as a player. He has signed on as a commentator for Season 2 of the World Series of Backgammon.
The Great Dane is well known in the poker world where he has more than $5 million in poker tournament cashes alone. Not many people know that Hansen was a professional backgammon player before he switched to poker, though.
The world of backgammon was too small for him back then, but Gus Hansen is returning now to help shed a little more light on it by commentating during three live events on the World Series of Backgammon tour.
"As a commentator, I get the opportunity to participate in the World Series of Backgammon events and to give my insights to a wider audience," Hansen says in his Full Tilt Poker blog.
"I certainly hope that it will encourage a lot of people (in particular poker players) to take up this great game - there is no doubt that it will develop your math skills thereby improving your decisions at the poker table."
Hansen will join co-commentator John Clark as well as host Jessie Cantrell on the WSOB presentation team.
The first live event they will be taking on is the U.K. Masters in London in November. From there they will head to the TrueMoneygames Nordic Open in Copenhagen in March 2008 and on to Cannes in Jully 2008 for the Riviera Cup. Play $500 match poker bonus.
The team will also present the grand finale of the series at the WSOB Championship with will also take place in Cannes to wrap up the second season.
"Both the presentation and production teams are excited about bringing the story and tension of match-play backgammon back to the screens of millions of backgammon and poker players & women poker pros across Europe," said Andy Bell, WSOB producer.
"The Series promises to be full of intriguing, skillful play, colorful personalities and I think a few surprises … We are confident that the growing gaming audience will find the content stimulating and educational."
Helping add to the entertaining nature of the game, the WSOB has a few format changes for this season which will give out more prize money and allow more players to get involved.
One change was the addition of the grand final. It will be played immediately following the conclusion of the Riviera Cup in Cannes. Download poker wallpapers.
The top eight players from the first three events will all win €10,000 seats in the grand finale, and there will be eight online qualifiers in the event as well.
The grand finale will also take on a more fast-paced format than the other live tournaments with shootout-style, three-point matches. Stay tuned to our poker blog for latest updates.
Live and online qualifiers will take place for all of the live events in the WSOB. The series will be broadcast on Eurosport 1 and 2. Poker News Source: Poker Listings
Gus Hansen is a professional poker and backgammon player, widely regarded as the best dual discipline player in the world and winner of the 2007 Aussie Millions poker and 4-time WPT title winner. John Clark, an experienced backgammon and poker commentator, is an acclaimed backgammon player who has been ranked UK #1 for much of the past decade. Jessie Cantrell is the well known anchor of the Black20 News, the popular broadband entertainment network.
Jessie will be reporting for World Series of Backgammon, which is being televised across Europe on Eurosport 1 & 2. The dynamic trio will be following the action at three live events on the WSOB tour: the UK Masters from London, November 2007, the TrueMoneygames Nordic Open from Copenhagen, March 2008 and the Riviera Cup from Cannes in July 2008, before presenting the grand finale of series at the WSOB Championship, also from Cannes, creating four Champions from the second season. This year a new format for the World Series of Backgammon promises more prize money, more opportunities for players & women poker pros to get involved and even more chances to qualify:
Eight top players from the three live events and eight online qualifiers will win EUR 10,000 seats for the WSOB Championship.
The WSOB Championship finale will be held immediately following the conclusion of the Riviera Cup in Cannes and will see players compete in shootout-style, three-point matches, contrasting greatly with the longer match format to be used in the three WSOB championship events, the UK Masters, the TrueMoneygames Nordic Open and the Riviera Cup. Download poker wallpapers.
A number of online partners will announce a number of multi-entry level satellite events over the coming months to find eight of the internet's top players who will each win EUR10,000 seats, qualifying directly to the season-ending finale.
Online poker partners will also announce qualifying events for each of three live WSOB events to run throughout the year.
Live qualifying events will be held for Round 1 of the WSOB, the UK Masters at Casino at the Empire, Leicester Square, from September to November 2007. Play $500 match poker bonus.
Andy Bell, Producer for the WSOB, said: "Both the presentation and production teams are excited about bringing the story and tension of match-play backgammon back to the screens of millions of backgammon and poker players across Europe. The Series promises to be full of intriguing, skilful play, colourful personalities and I think a few surprises. Notably the new WSOB format is both innovative and challenging, connecting three of the world’s most prestigious events. We are confident that the growing gaming audience will find the content stimulating and educational." Stay tuned to our poker blog for more updates.
Full Tilt Poker’s Lee Watkinson finished strong at the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event. Watkinson took eighth place at the final table and earned $585,699 for his impressive play.
Making his way through a field of 6,358 players & women poker players, Watkinson displayed the poise and patience that separates the pros from the amateurs. Watkinson was eliminated at the final table by eventual champion Jerry Yang. Yang made an amazing call of Watkinson’s all-in bet as Watkinson was trying to gather enough chips to make a run at the title.
Building upon his success at last year’s WSOP where he won his first bracelet in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Event, Watkinson demonstrated why he is considered one of the game’s best players. The attention from his final table appearance this year should help shine the spotlight on one of Watkinson’s passions - animal welfare. Watkinson has been helping to build a sanctuary for captive chimpanzees and will donate a portion of his winnings to this cause. Download poker wallpapers.
“Lee won his first bracelet in 2006 and has followed up that performance with a remarkable run the 2007 Main Event,” said fellow Full Tilt Poker pro Howard Lederer. “With his patience and tremendous skill, I expect Lee to have many more high finishes in the years to come.”
In addition to Watkinson, 65 of the world’s best professional poker players represent Full Tilt Poker, and spend several hours a week online helping amateur players learn the game by sharing their poker knowledge through real-time chats at the virtual tables.
“Team Full Tilt,” is a select group of the world’s finest professional poker players, including Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, woman poker pro Jennifer Harman, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Phil Gordon, Clonie Gowen, John Juanda, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, and Allen Cunningham who have collectively won 31 WSOP bracelets. Full Tilt Poker offers players the unique opportunity to Learn, Chat and Play poker with the best poker pros in the game.
A software engineer from Virginia and a psychologist from California are among the nine players remaining in the main event of the World Series of Poker.
Play wound down early Monday to the group that will compete for the $8.25 million top prize at the no-limit Texas Hold ’em tournament’s final table.
Raymond Rahme, who held pocket queens, called Steven Garfinkle, a 37-year-old history professor from Bellingham, Wash., who had pushed all-in with a short stack and an ace and three. The queens held up, putting Rahme, a 62-year-old South African retiree, in fourth with more than 16 million chips and sending Garfinkle home.
"I’d seen very few cards in the last hour and the time was coming where I needed to either pick up chips or go home," Garfinkle said.
He busted out in 10th, winning $476,926.
With the final table set, Philip Hilm, a 31-year-old Dane making a living playing poker online in England, held the lead with more than 22 million chips, followed by Toronto poker pro Tuan Lam, 40, with 21.3 million and British poker player Jon Kalmar, 34, with 20.3 million.
Kalmar said he was "nearly broke" before the $10,000 buy-in main event began play July 6, but he plunked down $500 in a satellite poker tournament to win a seat.
"Otherwise, I was thinking of taking a very long break from the game," the former Internet technology manager said. "I was thinking of going back to work for a bit. Maybe not for a while yet."
Others remaining in the hunt for the top prize were Lee Childs, a 35-year-old software engineer from Reston, Va., with 13.2 million; and Lee Watkinson, a 40-year-old pro from Cheney, Wash., in sixth with 9.9 million.
Online poker player Hevad Khan, 22, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was seventh with 9.2 million; Temecula, Calif.-based psychologist Jerry Yang, 39, was eighth with 8.4 million; and Russian poker pro Alex Kravchenko had 6.5 million.
The nine players were all that was left from a field of 6,358 who paid $10,000 in cash for a seat or qualified through satellite tournaments.
Those who busted out late Sunday and early Monday still went home with small fortunes.
Scotty Nguyen, "The Prince of Poker," ended his run through the main event, busting out two places short of the final table and ending hopes of a former champion winning again.
The 44-year-old Nguyen, the 1998 main event champion and the fan favorite as play wound down to a final table, had as many as 15.5 million in chips but lost three huge pots in a disappointing collapse. Play route 66 poker.
"When you’re playing good, you get too cocky and too confident and you give players no credit," he said after busting out in 11th with a $476,926 payday. "That’s what happened. That’s taking nothing away from all these players. They’re great players. That’s the reason they’re here."
Later, he took the microphone and thanked the crowd for cheering him on.
One woman yelled out, "We love you, Scotty!"
The last person to win more than once at the main event was the late Stu Ungar, who earned the $1 million top prize in 1997 after back-to-back victories in 1980 and 1981.
This year, John Armbrust, a 26-year-old high school teacher from Los Angeles, left in 18th place with $381,302. Women poker.
Ron Kluber, a 46-year-old intelligence analyst for U.S. Forces in Seoul, South Korea, came in 29th. Kluber said his $285,678 prize would help put two teenage daughters through college.
"It’s perfect timing," he said.
Jason Koshi, a 33-year-old certified public accountant, said his payday, also of $285,678, was "a big score" compared with his salary and what he made playing $10-$20 games in Los Angeles.
"This is more than I make in a year, definitely," he said.
The remaining players reconvene at noon Tuesday at the Rio hotel casino and play until there is a winner. Unlike previous years, when getting to the final table meant becoming an instant millionaire, ninth place this year will pay $525,934, and the millionaire’s club does not begin until fifth place, which pays $1.26 million. Download poker wallpapers.
The U.S. crackdown on online gambling, which is believed to have shrunk the field from last year’s record 8,773 entrants, and the flatter payout structure were seen as contributing to the more modest payouts.
Last year’s champion, Jamie Gold, won $12 million, but had to share an undisclosed amount with an acquaintance after a brief court battle.
We're going into Day 4 here at the World Series of Poker and the field has been shredded down to 337 players & women poker players. A mere 5% of the starting field.
Despite all four Day 1's being proof that nobody's safe at the WSOP, there has been a core group of pros who have managed to keep a sizeable chip advantage throughout the tournament.
Today Bodog Beat will profile several of these top surviving players, starting with Gus Hansen.
Gus Hansen has periodically been chip leader at the 2007 World Series of Poker.
"The Great Dane" is widely regarded as one of the best tournament players on the planet. His aggression at the felt is well known and very effective.
Hanson is no stranger to competition as he was a youth tennis champion and a world-class backgammon player. He is just coming off of a big win at the Aussie Millions main event this year, where first place earned him $1.2 million. Play route 66 poker.
He was recently inducted into the World Poker Tour Hall of Fame. He has won four WPT titles but amazingly he has never won a WSOP bracelet.
Going into Day 4 of the World Series of Poker, Hansen is eleventh in chips with $1,044,000. Undoubtedly, Hansen would love his first World Series of Poker bracelet to be for the Main Event. Play online poker.
Gus Hansen Eliminated from World Series of Poker
Gus Hansen, after being crippled by Jacks, busted out of the World Series of Poker. Play $500 match poker bonus.
Blink and another pro gets eliminated here at the World Series of Poker. This time it was "The Great Dane" Gus Hansen who was sent packing.
Hansen, a crowd favorite, spent two days of this poker tournament amongst the top chip leaders. His aggressive and often unpredictable style proved successful throughout the tournament until late today on Day 5 when he took several big hits.
Finally, after being crippled by going all-in with A/K against J/J he was severly short-stacked at $100K and went all-in with K/5 against Q/4. With a four on the Flop and Hansen unable to catch a pair on the Board, he was eliminated in 61st place, cashing for $154,194. Stay tuned to our poker blog for more updates.
With so many of the top poker pros eliminated from the World Series of Poker Gus Hansen is taking up the slack. Gus "The Great Dane" Hansen is currently number two overall on Day 2B of the World Series of Poker with a massive chip stack of approxiamtely $420,000.
Hansen, known for his extremely aggressive play, is now using his huge chip count to keep pressure on his opponents and build it even more. Play $500 match poker bonus.
Currently in first place is Richard Weisman with $485K. Weisman is a local, Las Vegas poker player, who has had one small cash at this poker tournament when he placed 75th in a World Series of Poker prelim event for $7,775.
Team Bodog Poker Players Moving to Day 2 of 2007 WSOP Main Event
All four flights of Day 1 of the 2007 World Series of Poker Main Event have now come to an end and Team Bodog is moving an impressive crew of players & women poker players onto Day 2. Jun Takada is the Team Bodog chip leader followed by 20 other players from the black and red. Here is a complete list of those who survived the Day 1 madness:
Jose Severino - 85,000 Eric Lida - 29,700 Steven Thornton - 63,300 Dan Melan - 24,500 Greg Hobson - 55,400 Jerry Randack - 45,600 Jun Takada - 100,400 Qinghai Pan - 11,000 Coren Greene - 22,400 Chris Hamman - 24,500 Steve Stolzmann - 28,500 Frank Welch - 68,000 Luis Fernandez - 50,400 Mark Treinen - 16,900 Clyd Rice - 28,800 Stewart Irvin - 97,100 Bobby Reints - 84,200 Shirley Williams - 62,700 Evelyn Ng - 70,000 Roger Polark - 96,700 Yuval Bronshtein - 41,000
Day 2A play will begin in just a few minutes and we will keep you up to date on the progress of Team Bodog live from the 2007 World Series of Poker. Stay tuned to our poker blog for mre updates.
While the ESPN featured table has been hosting former World Champions (Doyle Brunson, Joe Hachem, Chris Moneymaker and Jamie Gold), the secondary featured table, also known as the Bluff Magazine table, has featured some of poker's more famous personalities – Marcel Luske, Scotty Nguyen, Mike Matusow, T.J. Cloutier and Phil Hellmuth.
Only Nguyen was able to avoid the curse baby. Every other player at this table was eliminated on their first day – and quickly. Online poker.
The Buzz
The Amazon Room was subdued for most of the day Monday. For some reason, the day lacked the fervor of the other Day 1's despite the appearance of Jamie Gold, Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu.
But things changed once World Series Of Poker Tournament Director Jack Effel announced that this year's winner will receive $8.5 million.
There was no clapping, but the room suddenly started buzzing as hundreds of players & women poker players discussed the life changing money.
"I knew that would fire them up," Effel said to another Harrah's official after making the announcement.
Freddy Deeb smiles more when he's winning
Deeb is sitting slumped in his chair today with an empty Tylenol wrapper on his bag, but he comes alive when there are chips to be won.
The reigning $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. champion was all smiles after raising a player all-in with A-6 on an A-6-3 board and receiving a mess of chips when his opponent called the bet and missed his flush draw. Download poker wallpapers.
When asked which title he'd rather have, H.O.R.S.E. champ or Main Event champ, Deeb said "how about both."
He thought for a moment then added "although $10 million is better than $2 million."
Peanuts
Mr. Peanut is nowhere to be found one day after his tussle with Mike Matusow, but a couple of superstitious amateurs believe the peanut holds a special power.
Down to just 4,000 chips before the dinner break, a player took the advice of one his table mates and sprinkled peanut shells under his chair and placed a whole peanut on top of his dwindling chip stack.
"The poker gods love peanuts for some reason," his tablemate told him. "Make sure you crush up the shell good."
Touching Gus Hansen
I stopped at Gus Hansen's table when I noticed he had pushed all his chips into the middle. Hansen's opponent folded and the "Great Dane" was chipped up once again, sitting pretty with more than 30,000 tokens.
Hansen had been receiving a massage for more than an hour when I stopped to sweat his hand. The massage therapist, curious why I was scribbling notes behind Hansen, asked quietly who this guy was. Play $500 match poker bonus.
Not wanting to draw unnecessary attention, I wrote "Gus Hansen, one of the world's better players" on my notepad and showed it to her. Her eyes lit up when she realized she was touching a multi-millionaire.
Only 1,287 players & women poker players registered for the first of four starting days of play in the $10,000 buy-in World Series of Poker main event. That put the tournament on track to enter about 5,150 players, far fewer than the 8,773 that took part last year. If the trend continued, the top prize would be about $7.6 million, less than the $12 million awarded to last year's winner, Jamie Gold.
STUDS OF THE DAY: Brandon Moran, a 30-year-old Chicago securities trader, and Daniel Shak, a 48-year-old hedge fund manager from Bryn Mawr, Pa., agreed to donate their first- and second-place winnings of $350,000 to charity in the "Ante Up For Africa'' celebrity poker tournament organized by "Hotel Rwanda'' actor Don Cheadle and poker pro Annie Duke. The $5,000 buy-in event, which wrapped up late Thursday, featured 167 entrants with stars such as Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ray Romano, Montel Williams and Charles Barkley and a raft of poker pros. All 18 in-the-money finishers donated at least half of their winnings to charity, raising more than $500,000 in total. The money would be split between the International Rescue Committee and The Enough Project to help refugees and raise awareness of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced since ethnic warfare began in 2003. Play online poker.
BUSTED OUT: Poker pros Josh Arieh, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Thomas Austin "Amarillo Slim'' Preston Jr., Marcel Luske. Download poker wallpapers.
POKER TALK: Flush draw: When a player typically holds two hole cards of one suit while two of the same suit appear as community cards. The hope is that a fifth card of the same suit will give the player a powerful flush. Josh Arieh lost all his chips when he flopped a set - three of a kind - with a board of a six and five of hearts and a two of spades. Arieh held two sixes as hole cards. After an ace came up on the board, an opponent called Arieh's all-in bet with an ace and 10 of hearts and a flush draw, and hit a three of hearts on the river, or final card, for a flush. Play $500 match poker bonus.
UP NEXT: On Saturday, the second starting group of around 1,300 people will play 12 hours of poker to prepare for the second round. Play route 66 poker.
HE SAID WHAT?: "Everybody else started doing it. You know, I wasn't going to be the only one to hold out and pocket a big bunch of money with a cause going on like this.'' - Brandon Moran, after agreeing to donate the winnings for the top two spots without finishing a final table faceoff.
Since the United States has put its foot down about online gambling, there have been concerns that online poker won't be as profitable for players. If Gus Hansen's success so far this month is any indication, there's still plenty of cash online to be had.
Gus Hansen has already started off July with a bang after pulling in $145,000 playing H.O.R.S.E. and $628,000 in Pot-Limit Omaha at Full Tilt Poker according to HighStakesReport.com.
That gives him a big head start to perhaps matching or beating his coming out $1.4 million ahead online last month.
Other pros posting some solid winnings online already this month are John Juanda with a $108,000 Pot-Limit Omaha session and Todd Brunson with a $63,000 H.O.R.S.E. session. Download poker wallpapers.
David Benyamine saw some much-needed online success this month as well. For June he was down about $450,000 in Pot-Limit Omaha Hi, but he recorded a $435,000 winning session this week according to HighStakesdb.com. Play route 66 poker.
However, he also saw a $178,000 loss in H.O.R.S.E. and a $212,000 loss in another session of Pot-Limit Omaha. Even though they're losses, Benyamine's action is still an indicator of the kind of cash floating around out there for online poker players & women poker players.
They say the sting of a bad beat fades over time. One Absolute Poker player, however, hopes the memory of his bad beat lives on forever.
On July 3rd at 02:45 ET, an online poker player who goes by the name of CHAAWUU, lost quad tens to a straight flush playing $2 No Limit Hold'em. Normally, a loss like that would leave even the most hardened player feeling crushed. But because he was seated at one of Absolute Poker's Bad Beat Jackpot tables, CHAAWUU's loss set off the Bad Beat Jackpot bells for the 4th time and netted him $104,050.68 in cash. Play $500 match poker bonus.
"This latest win represents our biggest jackpot yet and we're just getting started," stated David Clainer, senior vice president for Absolute Poker. "We're turning losing hands into cold hard cash and Texas Hold'em players & women poker pros are loving it."
Since the 3rd jackpot was hit on June 26th, play online poker players swarmed to Absolute Poker in droves in hopes of hitting a qualifying bad beat and becoming the 4th Bad Beat Jackpot winner. Countless played up to three Texas Hold'em tables at once, driving the jackpot up even faster. Play route 66 poker.
To help the jackpot build, $0.50 is collected from qualifying hands at Bad Beat Jackpot tables. As a result of the game's popularity, the latest jackpot grew by over $2,000 every hour. By early morning on July 3rd, the jackpot had reached $297,287.63. Download poker wallpapers.
An event as monumental as the inaugural World Series of Europe - the first-time ever a WSOP bracelet will be presented on foreign soil - deserves a fitting sponsor: one with a similarly storied history in gaming and a comparable level of prestige. The WSOP's choice: Betfair.com
The deal isn't entirely official yet, but Harrah's Entertainment, Inc and Betfair announced today they have executed a non-binding Letter of Intent that designates Betfair.com as the "Presenting Sponsor" of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe through 2011.
In what will be the largest-ever union of its kind between an offline and an online poker / gaming company, the agreement calls for Betfair to be integrated into several facets of WSOP Europe and to promote the event internationally on a year-round basis.
"Betfair is a global leader in gaming innovation" said Jeffrey Pollack, Commissioner of the World Series of Poker. "Our two organizations each have a vision, style and brand strength that is complementary and world-class." Download poker wallpapers.
"Our alliance with Betfair will launch and build the World Series of Poker Europe with prestige and authenticity. This will likely become the most important poker tournament outside of Las Vegas," Pollack said.
"This is an historic deal for us," added David Yu, Chief Executive Officer of Betfair. "To present the WSOP, with its 38-year tradition, on its first venture into Europe is a great honour. Play $500 match poker bonus.
"This deal puts Betfair alongside the most important brand in offline poker, and bonds us with Harrah's Entertainment, the largest casino operator in the world."
The inaugural WSOP Europe will take place in London from September 6-16 and will be hosted at three casinos operated by London Clubs International - Fifty, in St James's; The Casino at the Empire, Leicester Square; and The Sportsman, on Marble Arch.
Three events will be played, the largest of which will be the Main Event - a £10,000 buy-in, 750-player & women poker players, six-day poker tournament with a prize pool of roughly £7.5 million.
WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and Managing Director of Betfair Games, Steve Ives, will formally announce the arrangement on July 5th at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Stay tuned to our poker blog for more updates.
Gus “Great Dane” Hansen was born on February 13, 1974 outside Copenhagen, Denmark. Prior to becoming a poker player, Hansen was a world class backgammon player who hoped to make backgammon his living, but the field was too small to suit him. In his youth, Hansen was a tennis champion, and played various other sports competitively as well.
Hansen was introduced to poker in Santa Cruz, California as an exchange student studying at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He fell in love with the game playing online poker & live poker with schoolmates. Hansen became notorious for raising or bluffing with almost any two cards, which often leads opponents to call or raise his bets when Hansen has a legitimate hand. This strategy seems to work well enough for him; his total live tournament winnings are currently just shy of $5 million. Download poker wallpapers.
While Hansen has played in numerous World Series of Poker events, he has not done incredibly well. In 2004 he managed into the prize pool placing 150th in the Main event, then in the 2006 Poker Tournament of Champions he made the final table, but was eliminated in the very first hand when his A-K failed to improve against a pair of 9’s. Play route 66 poker.
Hansen has done considerably better on the World Poker Tour, being the only player to win three WPT Open tournaments. Hansen also won the first World Poker Tournament Bad Boys of Poker Invitational, and in 2004 was inducted into the World Poker Tour Walk of Fame with Doyle Brunson and James Garner. Play $500 match poker bonus.
Poker odds on the Top Scandinavian poker player at the 2007 WSOP:
Wherever Gus Hansen is on the planet, he's never more than arm's length away from his one true love - Full Tilt Poker.
