Ask any number of male amateur poker players which poker pro they want to be like and odds are you’ll hear Gus Hansen’s name come up at least a few times. Why wouldn’t it? The man they call ‘The Great Dane’ is a poker champion who has won millions of dollars playing poker, is loved and feared by poker players worldwide, and was named the sexiest poker player in People Magazine’s 2004 Sexiest Man alive issue.

Before he became a famous poker player, Hansen was a world-class backgammon player and a youth tennis champ. Before choosing poker as a career Hansen tried to make ends meet as a professional backgammon player in New York in 2000. The numbers weren’t there for Hansen to make a living playing backgammon, and the poker world has paid for it ever since.

Hansen is famous for his extremely loose aggressive style of play that often leaves his opponents guessing as to what cards he has. No matter what two cards Hansen is holding he could raise or bluff the pot at any time. This style of play has brought him tremendous success on the WPT circuit.

He is the only player to win three WPT open tournaments. He also was the winner of the first WPT Bad Boys of Poker invitational tournament. In 2004, the WPT inducted him into the World Poker Tour Walk of Fame, along with Doyle Brunson and James Garner.

Hansen has also had plenty of success away from the WPT. This includes winning the first Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament and the first EPM event, the London All Star Challenge.

One of the most popular poker videos you can find on the internet is of Hansen winning the biggest pot ever on High Stakes poker, when he won $575,700 after his 5-5 defeated Daniel Negreanu’s 6-6 when the board showed 9-6-5-5-8. It’s hands like that which make people want to be Gus Hansen.

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