Gus Hansen Interview

Below is a portion of an interview with Gus Hansen, conducted by Adam Schwartz and Mike Johnson on Rounders; The Poker Show. Gus is best known for dominating the World Poker Tour during it's early years. These days you can see him playing in the hieghest stakes poker games on Full Tilt Poker.

Adam: Do you think all of this talk about your loose/aggressive style gets you a lot of action, or is that sort of disappearing now?

Gus: I will say that it definitely gets me some action. The thing about the TV is they play selected hands. They don't show the entire final table. They of course show the more interesting hands, and what could be more interesting than some crazy guy making a big bluff with 2-4 off-suit or something like that. So of course, they're gonna show those hands and I know every time I'm at a table with 8 players I've never seen before, they might have seen me on TV.

They kind of already have it in their minds that the last time they saw me I was bluffing with 2-4 off-suit and called all in with this and that. So naturally they will give me a little more action because those are the hands that they're seeing me play. But they might not have seen the fact that I won a big hand with kings a day earlier or whatever, so it definitely gets me more action that's for sure.

Mike: Why do you think more people don't employ your style. I kind of get a sense that it's because maybe their ego gets in the way and they don't want to be embarassed on TV. I get the sense that you kind of don't care if you turn over any two cards and get caught in a bluff. Your pride is not on the line as much and I think a lot of the other people don't want to0 get seen as making a bad play on TV. Do you think that might have anything to do with it?

Gus: Well, definitely I know I'm used to playing on TV. I've been in the situation before and I think a lot of newcomer's first time on a final table on TV like you said, they don't want to come off looking a little bit foolish, making a stupid call with a bad hand this and that. It might affect their play. Basically what I try to do it is just basically play my game and not really care about the cameras being there and the TV being there. Just playing my straight forward poker game, and I actually like the fact that I sometimes can turn over the bluff because it only adds to my credibility that I am a crazy guy.

Adam: How easy is it to play a table full of guys who are scared to death of you. Generally these will be players who don't  have much experience, obviously the top players and most of the guys you see on TV aren't going to have that problem, but it must be easy like in Australia; you sit down at a table of people you don't know, you are almost way ahead of the game at the beginning, other than your skill, they are just petrified.

Gus: I don't know if petrified is the right word. They definitely give me a little more room to maneuver and one thing that is especially nice, I think without exaggerating, I might be the all time tournament leader in walks. People don't want to raise my big blind if they don't have anything, because they know I'm going to call.  "So why mess around with a queen-6 when I know the guy is gonna call anyway". That's nice, sometimes late in the tournament you might be a little bit under pressure, a little short stacked, but suddenly you get a walk or two in your big blind and you maintain your stack instead of someone just raising and you look down at a 9-4 and you have to fold. So I mean, I do get some walks and I do get some respect in a way that people don't want to mess too much with me.

Mike: Because you aren't afraid to put your chips in with any two cards, do you feel that over the last few years you've kind of been unfairly portrayed as a lucky player? Obviously the more pots you play, the more times you are going to win as an underdog. Do you get a sense that people unfairly call you lucky maybe on more than one occasion?

Gus: Well, I wouldn't say that, I think I might have said this before some other place, but I think if you take the people to be considered to be the top tournament players you mention; Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Chris Ferguson, there's a lot of names to mention, but really if you take some of those names and then you throw me into the loop as well, and you'd have to attach the word lucky to one of these players, I think pretty much everybody would pick me. So that's kind of a little bit funny to me, because I have done fairly well on the tournament circuit, but perception is a funny thing. The TV can show you as a very tight player by not showing any of the hands that you play. Or it can show you also as a crazy player by showing all of the crazy hands that you play.

They've kind of given me a bit of an image and that is as the crazy guy. So basically they want to show all the hands where I get money in with the Q-10 and the other guy has the A-K and I get lucky and flop 3 tens, but none the less it is a card game and a lot of times unless the other guy sits with two aces or you have an 8-10 and the guy has 8-8, you still have a pretty decent chance to win the hand, and sometimes the pot odds actually gives you the right call.

Basically you're getting 2 to 1 and you are only a 60/40 dog you definitely should call. I tend to make a lot of those calls and sometimes I'm of course very wrong. But sometimes I'm also very right, and they tend to probably show more of the times where I'm wrong than when I'm right. It definitely adds to my lucky image. Really, I don't mind. If people want to call me lucky that's fine with me.

Mike: You mentioned Daniel Negreanu, lets talk about the most famous hand on High Stakes Poker, a $600,000 pot...for those of you who haven't seen it Gus had four 5s against Daniel's 6s full...

This was a huge hand. Gus checked the river on this hand knowing that Daniel would bet, and was able to get Daniel to call a check raise for more than $150,000.

Gus: Well, there was kind of a couple of different ways to play this. Basically I could go for the kill which ultimately I did, and basically it's very hard in such a deep hand as we played, there was raises and re-raises before the flop, and a check raise on the flop, there's a good chance that if I just lead out there he's just going to call, even though he has such a strong holding as he had. Part of the hand...he was definitely trapping me too. So it was kind of a situation where both players were trapping, unfortunately for him I was trapping with the quads and he only had a full house.

Basically, I think if I lead out somewhere in the range of $60,000-$80,000, there's a good chance that since...what am I going to call his raise with?...I'm only going to call with hands that have him beat, there is a chance he might just call and basically I felt just from his actions on the flop and on the turn he had a pretty good holdings...and I guess I went for the big thing and as it turned out...there is a chance that maybe if he hadn't been a little bit stubborn he could have gotten away from the hand. If you actually watch the clip he kind of mentions that I could have nines full, I could have 4 fives, and he actually mentions a couple of hands that he cannot beat, but still makes the call in the end.

Mike: Did he ever tell you what he thought you had?

Gus: Well, actually if you see the clip, he mentions a couple of hands that have him beat and he still makes the call. It seems a little funny that he actually thinks that I have him beat but still makes the big big call. You have to think about it, I actually raise him $170,000 on the river, so it was a mighty big call that he made. In retrospect I think he was kind of coming onto what I actually had, but was too curious to make the lay down.

Adam: If it were reversed how hard do you think it would be to get away if you were Daniel in that spot?

Gus: Oh,lets see. A lot of people have asked me that question. Just like I kind of argued that maybe Daniel could have gotten away from the hand, I think that I probably should be able to get away from the hand, but actually doing it when you sit at the table is a much, much harder thing to do.

Adam: One of the things that I love reading about are the prop bets that you get guys into. I think there was one where you had to run a marathon in under 4 hours, you had a big tennis match with Patrick Antonius didn't you?

Gus: Well, basically I mean I used to be a high school/college tennis player and so did Patrick and basically a good friend of ours who lives here in Vegas used to play on the ATP tour. We just have played a little around, play a little tennis with the pro and basically we just came up with the idea that maybe it would be a good match up. Since a lot of poker players are a little bit crazy gamblers, we decided to make a big bet on a tennis match.

Basically we were supposed to play here in April, unfortunately Patrick has been injured with his back, so we have actually postponed it, so we don't have a final date for when we are gonna play. So it is postponed a little bit, but definitely like I said, we are all a little bit crazy gamblers. There is a big tennis bet coming up, we bet on the golf course, there is just a lot of bets floating around. I mean sometimes I'm flying from L.A to Miami with a friend of mine and basically we bet on what time the plane will take off and this and that. So there is just a lot of funny bets on day to day things that we kind of make up as we go along.

Adam: Is that the tennis pro that you are gonna bet that he can catch and use his hands, and throw instead of using a racket, is that true?

Gus: That's actually a different semi-pro here in Vegas. There is a lot of good tennis players here in Vegas from UNLV and this and that. The catch and throw guy is a different guy. And I'm not sure...Doyle Brunson said, and Doyle has been around the block a lot longer than I have...if people come up to you and want to bet you on some funky thing, usually you should not take that bet. There is a good chance that they will beat you.

This interview goes on to talk about Roger Federer and some other things that I don't feel like transcribing. If you want to hear the rest, you can head over to the home of Rounders The Podcast at www.bigpoker.ca