Gus Hansen had a marvelous year on the World Poker Tour where he was the only participant to make it to the closing table in three of the competitions. Gus Hansen has appeared on High Stakes Poker on GSN where he bought into the game for $400, 000. You may remember one of the biggest pots in big stakes poker recorded history competing against Daniel Negreanu. He won a huge pot with quads against Daniel’s full house. Gus has earned many televised poker appearances and is thought to be one of the strongest bettors in the world. While playing web poker, another side of Hansen has emerged. Gus often participates in the 200/400 No Limit maximum buy-in of Forty Thousand dollars. Gus frequently buys-in for the min of Sixteen Thousand dollars and plays very weak. He sits there waiting for a decent hand and then goes all in. I believe Hansen is a great poker player but not even close to the everyday players at 200/400NL. Unless he is flat broke, he has little or no reason to play at the table with the minimum buy in.
Buying in for the minimum takes most of the ability out of big stack poker. Hansen is accepted to be one of the best poker players anywhere in the world but he cannot buy in for the total dollar value. I think television can skew our view of the real world sometimes. The best poker players in the world might just be players you have won’t have heard of before. Gus can be seen competing in web poker on Full Tilt. He commonly plays in high stakes omaha hold’em and Holdem. Gus Hansen has proven himself as a competition player. Can he back up his skills in cash games?