Poker Green Room

Poker Profiles: Gus Hansen

Prior to Poker, Gus Hansen was a topnotch Backgammon and Tennis player. His competitive skills, which was there since he was young, helped him to become one of the more recognized Poker professionals around. Gus consistently joined indoor and outdoor sports competitions while he was in school. He is true enough, a successful junior athlete. His love for competition was with him all throughout. When he moved to New York City in 2000, the same innate fire made him turn to gambling.

Gus's Backgammon stint was a fruitful one. The only reason he left it to move on to Poker is that he find Backgammon too small of a world to reign in. Poker has been the most popular and favored gambling arena since time immemorial and Gus felt that it is the perfect industry to strut his stuff. He was right.

Since joining Poker, Gus has earned $5 million worth of prize money. Although a World Series of Poker bracelet seems too elusive for him, Josh is positive that he will get it sometime in the future. After all, it is not really what his mind is focused on at the moment. Gus is currently all out to win money games. And boy, win he did -- several times!

Gus is a sure hit at the World Poker Tour. He already won three open tournaments and a Bad Boys of Poker invitational event. Gus's back-to-back successes are reasons enough that made the event organizers induct him into the WPT Walk of Fame in 2004. That means the thirty-something Poker professional is included in an exclusive club with certified Poker greats James Garner and Doyle Brunson.

Aside from WSOP and WPT, Gus also made significant appearance in other tournaments including the European Poker Masters, the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament, the European Poker Tour, the Asian Poker Tour, the Professional Poker Tour, NBC's Poker After Dark, and the Aussie Millions. Gus sure is well-traveled. He is more than willing to go out of his way to participate in the hottest event anywhere in the world it might be.

Gus was the co-founder of an online gambling site, pokerchamps.com, which was launched in 2003. Despite it being sold to a British company, he remains a house pro and even participated in a PokerChamps Danish championship. Gus is currently maintaining a website of his own, theplyr.com, where he itemizes his game schedule. He also has a blog and some articles posted on the website to help out aspiring players take the leap.