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Gus Hansen used to be known for his amazing live tournament results. He won a WSOP bracelet in a no-limit hold'em high roller heads-up tournament, he took down 2007 Aussie Millions main event and he also has three WPT titles to his name. Gus has over $10,000,000 in tournament winnings which puts him somewhere around the TOP 50 on the all-time money list.
However, in the recent years, Hansen became infamous for his poor high stakes online results. With more than $20,000,000 in losses, he's arguably one of the least successful online poker players in the history of the game. Because of that, it's very easy to dismiss him as a player, but we shouldn't be too quick in doing so.
First of all, Hansen was one of the pioneers of the modern loose-aggressive play style, he also has a proven track record as a winner in the live poker environment and he was successful enough that - contrary to the most poker players out there - he had those 20 million dollars to lose.
Playing Fast and Loose
For a guy who's supposed to be a terrible cash game player, Gus showed a lot of experience with the deep stack cash format in this little hand from the fifth season of High Stakes Poker. His preflop call with 63o might seem terribly loose to most people, but questionable hand selection is an integral part of loose-aggressive play style in a live poker context.
Besides, Gus had great odds to join the hand given the family pot that formed before him. Even if we take into account the fact that balancing isn't exactly the most important thing in a 5-way pot, it was still correct of Gus to check the flop out of position on such a dry board texture with his bottom two pairs.
Winning Against the Best of Them
A guy that lost 20 million online shouldn't be able to hold his own against the likes of Phil Ivey right? And yet this is exactly what we can observe in this next hand. Gus started with a limp which in the context of an online game might be seen as an exclusively bad play, but if you have the likes of Phil Ivey or Andrew Feldman sitting behind you creative preflop play can become a necessity. On the flop, Hansen decided to use his equity to fight for the dead money in the middle rather than relying on his marginal showdown value in a multi-way pot.
We can clearly see the power of that decision given how he caused Allen Cunningham to fold the best hand. The turn was pretty straightforward for Gus and much less so for Phil. Ivey had a long history with Hansen, he realized that after a preflop limp the hands like QQ or 99 are somewhat unlikely to be in Hansen's range and he also blocked KQ or even the hands Gus might've used to bluff with like KT/KJ etc.
Going Aggro
This little compilation of clips shows exactly what kind of player Gus Hansen was in live poker games. In the hand number one - just like in all the other hands described above - Hansen started with an unorthodox and loose preflop decision followed by some relentless aggression.
Given that Gus most likely had an edge in majority of live poker lineups he could get away with those questionable preflop actions and make up for them with his post flop advantage, which is precisely what he did by lead double barreling on a board that he blocked most of the reasonable premium hands on (AQ, AJ, AK etc.).
In the hand number two, Gus made another out of position call that he followed up with post flop aggression. Again, instead of relying on the marginal showdown value of his hand he decided to use his equity proactively. The most interesting part of the hand was the turn "stop and go" play that was no doubt caused by the board texture that Hansen expected frequent floats on.
Soul Reader
The last hand that we're going to discuss might be the reason for the vast discrepancy between Hansen's live and online results. Many of the old school players fail to transition to the online environment because they rely so much on the live table reads that aren't available to them in internet games. Gus has three WPT titles to his name which is extremely impressive and clearly shows that he know what he was doing in those tournaments, and yet his all-in call with ten high against Esfandiari would've been practically inexcusable in the online context.
