(Featured image: courtesy of WPT)
Rarely do fans worry about a poker player’s appearance, but it’s undeniable that when a handsome lad graces the table, the lady fans pay more attention. Gustav Hansen is not only well-recognized for his skills, but also for his looks. He is branded as one of the greatest faces in the poker industry.
This Danish player has a really notable career on the felt. He owns 1 WSOP gold bracelet and has three titles in the World Poker Tour. At 47, he has accomplished quite a lot more than the average pro player, which made him get into the list of the most promising and the richest.
Before becoming a pro on the felt, he was already a world-renowned backgammon icon. His skills and foundation in this game might have played a huge role in him becoming a poker superstar.
| Full Name: Gustav Hansen | |
| DOB: February 13, 1974 | |
| Birthplace: Copenhagen, Denmark | |
| Profession: Professional poker player, backgammon player, accountant | |
| Wife: N/A | |
| WSOP Bracelets: 1 | |
| Live Career Earnings: $10+ Million |
Disclaimer: This is a question that no one can answer with 100% certainty except for Gus himself. We can only assume his approximate net worth based on various sources that we’ve read or heard about. Let’s get started.
Gustav Hansen Bio
Hansen is born from a Danish family. He is the eldest son of the family and is known to have a close relationship with his mom. It was his mother who gave him the nickname Gus, and it stayed with him even when he grew older.
Gustav didn’t go to a regular elementary school. Rather, his formative years took place in their home, with his mother and Aunt Elise being his teachers. He has always been disciplined to study well academically, and he happily obliged.
When he was a teenager, his parents gave birth to three other siblings, a boy and two girls. Since they have quite a huge age gap, they treated him more like a father than a brother and they looked up to him.
Also, he was already big enough to take responsibility over them, so he helped his parents feed his siblings and put them to sleep when they had night jobs.
During his free time, his father would teach him how to play backgammon. Together, they discovered the most effective winning strategies that helped Gus hone his gaming skills.
The young lad loved the game a bit too much that he even organized a school club dedicated to learning backgammon. They would also have school tournaments for the game back then.
All these skills reflected on his academic performance as well.
Like Liv Boeree, he was not only a good player, but he also did well academically. He is more into mathematics and he’s great at it. In fact, he took advanced math classes and got very good grades. This academic excellence landed him several scholarships and got him into USCS.
Poker Career
The Great Dane’s first encounter with poker is when he was still in college. His classmate hosted a series of Texas Hold’em games and they taught Hansen how to play.
He was too quick to learn the game and pick up some great strategies which made him the winner that very same night. As a first-timer, his friends were rather surprised.
Since he had to move back to Denmark to fulfill his mandatory military service in 1995, he wasn’t able to join any other poker games, but he did practice with his fellow soldiers during breaks.
His dedication has allowed him to polish his skills even in camp. When he was dismissed from service, he started joining real tournaments this time.
The turning point for his professional poker career was when he won during the 2002 WPT Five-Diamond event where he raked up huge winnings amounting to $550,000. And that’s just the beginning.
Several months after, he also became the champion of Wolrd Poker Tour No-limit Hold’em event. He won a whopping $530,00 this time which only made his bankroll grow even bigger.
Sometime in 2003, he was able to build his own online poker room which he eventually sold for $15 million because he barely had time to manage it. His career was at its peek during these times, winning back to back tournaments here and there.
He took the biggest leap in his career by joining the 2005 invitational tournament for Poker Superstars. Though the stakes were high and his bankroll wasn’t that much back then, he joined head on. He competed against other famous folks like Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, and Doyle Brunson.
In the early 2000s, was also invited to guest on the High Stakes Poker TV program to play with poker celebrities (including Barry Greenstein and Antonio Esfandiari), and he beat the all-famous Daniel Negreanu.
As seen from the video above, that pot had earned him another half a million dollar cash.
But, a few years later, Gus started challenging himself by doing online poker tournaments, which he did not anticipate to be a lot harder than live tourneys.
Because of this, his accumulated losses reached to an all-time high of about $20+ million. With those downtimes, he decided to take a few years off and live normally as an accountant and a backgammon player.
In 2016, however, he shocked the world by announcing that he would go back to playing in live tournaments and that he was ready for action again.
Gus Hansen Net Worth
There’s no doubt The Great Dane has amassed millions of dollars in tournament winnings, but of course, we’ll also have to consider his significant losses during his entire career.
With that, his net worth is down to $10+ million.
Though it’s not as huge as that of other more popular players like Tobey Maguire, at the time it was sizeable enough to earn him a spot in the list of the richest poker players today.
So far, his best 5 cashes to date are as follows:
- 2nd place 2008 Five-Star World Poker Classic – $1,714,800
- 1st place 2007 Aussie Millions – $1,200,000
- 1st place 2005 Poker Superstars Invitational – $1,000,000
- 1st place WSOP One Drop Mega Satellite 2012 – $1,000,000
- 3rd place Aussie Millions 2012 for $823,579
It’s important to note that despite his meteoric rise, we also witnessed the biggest downfall where Gus Hansen became the 2nd biggest losing player in online poker, losing $21 million in a span of a short few years.
He basically became broke and had to get a regular 9 to 5 job as an accountant.
Now, besides poker tourneys, how did Gus Hansen make his money? Find out in our other post!
Over to you:
Do you know any fun facts about Gus Hansen? Was there something you didn’t know about him? Please share them in the comments section below!
