Reporting on the struggles of Gus Hansen in recent years is nothing new. In fact, it’s like saying that potato chips are bad for you or fish like water or…..okay, you get the picture. We even took the time earlier this year to show Hansen’s downswing in online poker (see here) to document how bad things have gotten.
Interestingly enough, things have only gotten worse for Hansen since May as he is now down $7.7 million! Over $1.5 million of this amount has come in the last few weeks, and there doesn’t look to be any end in site for the man who has made over $7.5 million in career tournament earnings.
So where did things go wrong for the Great Dane whose aggressive style was once looked at as ingenious? Well besides playing high stakes cash games in general, it seems like the end of every year has marked the downfall of Hansen. He always starts every year off in the positive only to tumble when the winter months draw near. And, as Phil Galfond commented, Gus can’t seem to stay away from games where people are better than him.
Another huge blow to Hansen is that he doesn’t walk away from the game despite everything suggesting he should. Before 2010 started, Hansen planned on retiring from poker…..big mistake! All sorts of rumors have been flying around about him borrowing millions of dollars from pros like Doyle Brunson too.
It seems that Hansen would have been better off dropping out of the game like many of his famous poker counterparts did a few years after the poker boom. People such as Chris Ferguson, Annie Duke, her brother Howard Lederer, Joe Hachem, and Barry Greenstein have all realized that the competition in the richest cash games is a little too tough for the average poker has-been. It’s a shame that Gus can’t see it too.
