Gus Hansen Close to $20 Million in High Stakes Online Poker Losses

This story has been getting quite a bit of circulation this past week.

According to HighStakesDB, Gus Hansen is less than $200k away from $20,000,000 in career online cash game losses on Full Tilt.

Fortunately, he has over $11 million in live poker tournament cashes (The Hendon Mob) and is currently ranked #1 on Denmark's all-time money list for that venue.

Hansen's colleague at Full Tilt Viktor "Isildur1" Blom is also having a bad year--down $1.7 million in 2014.

it really is interesting and leads you to ask questions like should they be the face of the site if they're losing so much? however, winning players don't always = marketable, so it makes sense to still use people like gus and isildur1 if they help bring in new players. it still has to be pretty embarrassing though for gus especially... it's related to a lot of recent news of privacy and publishing results like that publicly, but that's for another discussion.

I agree. The privacy issues involved with posting profit-based results is not something that a lot of people (including myself) are 100% comfortable with.

It's funny because one of my main motivations back when I grinded full-time was to make sure I was maintaining a winning SNG rate so I wouldn't get ridiculed by my peers. I was fortunate in that aspect, although I'm sure my all-time online cash game numbers are slightly negative.

Even given the success I had, I wish my stats weren't publicly available sometimes.

As far as Hansen and Blom are concerned, you're right that they're great names for attracting new players to the sites. I feel bad for Gus, as he's always been extremely nice to me every time I've run into him at a live event or spoken to him over the phone. I've never had the pleasure of meeting Blom, but I'm sure he's a nice guy too.

Brilliant the way the title was cropped in the new post search list,
Gus Hansen Close to $20 Million in High Stakes

I thought it was going to be a report that Gus was close to recovering it.


winning players don't always = marketable, so it makes sense to still use people like Liv Boeree and Vicky Corren (Oops she did it again, not just a pretty face then).

I don't want to be mean but Gus isn't there for his looks. Marketing, misery loves company, people feel happier that it's not just them if the Greats and the danes can lose too.
Perhaps a turnaround recovery story is also still expected.

I'd be the opposite of embarrassed if I were $20m down at a particular site. To be able to just shrug your shoulders at such losses is a sick brag.