Poker Pro Gus Hansen Back On A $2.5 Million Downswing

Gus Hansen will take little comfort from showing a $400,000 profit in 2010 so far, having been up nearly $3 million back in January.
Hansen will now be trying to avoid deja-vu and a repeat of last year’s performance, which saw him end up the biggest loser on Full Tilt Poker for 2009, having lost a massive $5.6 million throughout the year after being up $3 million in January.
While few would dispute the Great Dane’s poker tournament credential, having notched up in excess of $7,500,000 from live tournament cashes throughout his career, it is his cash game, and particularly Pot Limit Omaha and Mix Limit games which seems to be his greatest leak. Hansen has lost a huge $6 million alone at Full Tilt Poker’s PLO tables since 2007.
In fact, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond once famously implied that Gus was responsible for attracting sharks to Full Tilt’s high stakes action, and said:
“To call Gus a fish is a little bit strong because he is a good player. But he is losing money. Again, I could be proven wrong, but he’s the reason that most of the games run right now.”
Although Galfond’s comment may seem a little harsh, Gus Hansen has still managed to lose nearly $2 million over the last month and now runs the risk of finding himself back on the FTP loser’s list once more.
The upswings and downswings which are regularly experienced by poker players is taken as part and parcel of the game but as you progress higher up the stakes some of those downswings can be hard to endure even for top pros.
Gus Hansen could certainly be forgiven for feeling  some ‘swing sickness’ following his latest roller coaster ride at the poker site. Perhaps more worrying for Gus would be the memory of that $8.36 million downswing he had to endure in 2009 and so he might need to reanalyse his approach to the various poker variants if he wants to avoid history repeating itself.