Regardless of the small-talk though: Gus Hansen is indeed the true definition of a hardcore poker professional. This guy breathes poker, and guess what – he eats opponents for breakfast. Not just any old amateurs though, but guys like Esfandiari, Hellmuth, Ivey and you name it.

People call Sam Farha “Mr. Cool”, which might be right, but I personally think Gus Hansen should be called something like that instead of “Great Dane”.

He is the kind of player who can perfectly assess a given situation and do whatever it takes – regardless of how out of this world it may seem to be – to take advantage of it. If his strategy says so he won’t hesitate to go all-in on every single hand he plays, and win too. Like him or hate him, I think you’ll agree with me that he is one hell of a spectacular player to watch.

Born in 1974 in Copenhagen, Gus Hansen proved to be a backgammon talent from an early age. When he moved to the US in 2000, he initially wanted to make a name for himself and earn a living playing professional backgammon. Soon though, he found that the field the Big Apple could offer him in that respect was hopelessly undersized.

He had started to play poker in 1993, in Santa Cruz, in California (back when he was an exchange student) so it was only natural that he move on to the next best thing and attempt to achieve in poker that what the circumstances prevented him from achieving in backgammon.

If you reckon his WSOP portfolio still leaves room for a bit of improvement, wait till you get a load of his WPT achievements: He is the only player ever who’s won no less than 3 open events, he reached 6 final tables and finished in the money 8 times.

He’s won the inaugural European Poker Masters event in 2006. He co-founded an online poker room in 2003 (pokerchamps.com), which was sold two years later to Betfair for about $15 million. That would have anyone believe that the Great Dane would never ever run into financial problems but word has it he’s had the knife right down to the bone bankroll-wise, several times in his career due to losses in cash games.

download some of our Gus Hansen torrents to watch him in action