Gus Hansen - Denmark
Gustav Hansen was born near Copenhagen, Denmark on February 13, 1974 and played a lot of sports in his youth, particularly enjoying tennis. Gus says he was always interested in numbers and mathematics, which was one of the reasons he became fascinated with backgammon when he was first introduced to the game. Hansen currently lives in Monaco where the annual World Backgammon Championships are held every July in the Fairmont Monte Carlo Hotel.
From Backgammon to Poker
He became absorbed with backgammon, and after studying and practicing the game for a time set out to play in live events in different parts of the world. While living in New York City and playing backgammon in clubs there, Gus hung out with Phil Laak, another Backgammon player who turned Poker pro. At some point in the 1990s, Gus was introduced to poker games and in 1997 began to play in major poker tournaments.
Gus has since earned more than $5,000,000 in Poker so far and has established a record by winning first place in four World Poker Tour (WPT) events. Gus has also triumphed in many other poker tournaments, such as and the Main event of the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament, Season 1 and the Main of the 2007 Aussie Millions Poker event, which is where he was when the Atlantis Million Backgammon Tournament took place in The Bahamas, otherwise he would have played in The Bahamas backgammon event.
Hansen has been ranked in the top 32 Giants of Backgammon since 1997 and is one of the most feared money game players. He is often seen at live tournaments playing high stakes money games with Mike Svobodny, who Gus says taught him a lot about backgammon, the hard way.
In the last 16 players of the Super Jackpot at the Monte Carlo World Backgammon Championship in 2001, Gus (then #22 Giant) went up against Nack Ballard of the United States (then #1) and although Gus lost the match, the subsequent analysis of the match showed that Gus (and Nack) both played at with a very low error rate - World Class according to Snowie.
World Series of Backgammon Commentator
Hansen remains active in backgammon and has joined Season 2 of World Series of Backgammon Enterprises (WSOB) to be a co-commentator John Clark and hostess Jessie Cantrell. At a recent WSOB event, the 20th PartoucheGammon Nordic Open Backgammon Championship held in Helsingør, Denmark in March of 2008, Hansen played a $10,000 Exhibition Speed-Gammon Match against Sander Lylloff of Denmark, the current #4 Giant. Hansen won the match, which was filmed as part of the WSOB forthcoming series to be televised throughout Europe and other countries.
In a WSOB press release just before the Nordic Open, Gus said: “Backgammon's in my blood. Though I've had great success on the poker table and remain committed to the game, I often feel that the challenge that exists in backgammon is greater. It's a more intense ‘thinking' game than poker and the head-to-head nature of competition is very gladiatorial. That's why I'm coming home to Denmark to compete in the Nordic Open, part of the WSOB.”
