The France-based online poker and sports-betting site Winamax has announced the signing of Gus Hansen to its team of pros.
Hansen was one of the most visible - and exciting - players to emerge from the poker boom of the 2000s. Playing an aggressive, swashbuckling style, the Danish phenom blazed a trail across the poker world, picking up three WPT titles and a WSOP Europe bracelet by 2010.
Take a glance at his Hendon Mob record and you’ll see that his first three tournament results were wins, with earnings of over $1m in his first two results alone. He’s since amassed over $10m in tournament winnings, taking a top 3 spot in the Denmark all-time money list, but those results dried up 10 years ago: in the last decade he has just one tourney result, cracking the top 700 in the WSOP Main Event five years ago.
While he never disappeared completely - he’s been seen often in high stakes cash games in the intervening years - it seemed his passion for tournament poker had faded.
Comeback set for EPT Monte Carlo
That’s a situation that has definitely changed. Hansen will be hoping to add the first result in a new chapter of his career next week, as he’s confirmed he’ll be playing the European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final in Monte Carlo.
He’ll be wearing the patch of his new sponsors, Winamax, in place of the Full Tilt patch older viewers might be more used to seeing him sport. Hansen was a prominent member of Team Full Tilt back in the day, famously racking up online losses on the site of over $20m between 2007-14.
Recent years have seen Hansen return to his native Denmark to focus on family and other pursuits, but he feels the time is right to make a big return to tournament poker at one of the grandest events on the calendar. Hansen has lived in Monaco in the past, so will be looking forward to EPT Monte Carlo as a homecoming of sorts.
“I’ve taken a bit of a back seat,” said Hanson in his comeback reveal, “I had a son and all that, and then I started playing poker again. I played a tournament in Las Vegas in December [the WPT World Championship]. Team Winamax was there… we thought it might be the right time, all the lights were green.”
Hansen joins a talent-stacked Team Winamax that features players including Davidi Kitai, Mustapha Kanit, Adrián Mateos and Gaëlle Baumann, among others. Buckle up.
Image courtesy of the WPT
