Gus hansen - poker idol or lucky maniac?

[PokerPaul]

just watched the WPT show where he won second event.

I know he must be good, in terms of his aggressive preflop play and his ability to put rest of table on defensive.

But i must say for him to succeed, is it all superior skill, or much luck...

Obviously, from what i saw im leaning towards the luck angle.

Playing hands like 10 3, j4, A6offsuit etc, against players with higher chipcounts on big raises requires luck in long run.

He gets away with it early on, then players catch on to him, so right then for his strategy to work he must start catching incredible cards and draws when those other players start to challenge him more.....

And that is exactly how the cards and timing worked out for him.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

If you watch Hansen carefully, you'll note that he makes very few mistakes after he flop.

[KC50]

You see only a select few hands on TV. And like the other poster already said he plays very well after the flop.

KC

[sweetjazz]

I think I know the show to which you are referring. One thing I noticed is that he managed to get people to lay down better hands when he made small bets with junk hands. Or they would often give him free cards, and then they would see at the showdown that he had nothing the whole way. (This helped set up some of his later plays.)

When he hit his hand, he would make a huge bet that looked like a steal. He got called down by worse hands (once by Andy Bloch and once by Daniel Rentzer heads up iirc).

His play would have cost him a lot if he didn't have good reads on his opponents. I suspect he recognized that he was looked upon as a very aggressive player, and in particular someone who liked to (1) trap players by making small bets with big hands, and (2) make big bets with nothing to try to steal large pots. And no doubt he often does both of these in tournaments. It seemed like in this final table, he sensed his opponents were on the lookout for these types of plays. So he did the opposite -- made bets that looked like trapping bets with junk hands and made some big bets that looked like bluffs or semibluffs with made hands. And it worked.

The key is that he adjusted his play to what he thought was the best line against this kind of opposition. I can assure you that if he was against players who would always pay off small bets to make sure they weren't being bluffed but who were too timid to call a big bet, then he would have played much differently!

That is what distinguishes his play from that of an ordinary loose aggressive player. If you are a LAG and don't adjust your play to your opponent's play, then you are going to lose big time in the long run. If you are capable of playing like a LAG and do so only when the table conditions dictate it, then you are dangerous!

Also, just because you saw him limping in with lots of hands and the announcers keep saying things like "it pains him to throw away 32o," I suspect he was folding a lot of hands preflop. Because he was at the final table of a tournament where the blinds are already quite high, he realized that the variables as to whether to enter a pot included much more than his hole cards; it included his position, his sense of the strength of the hands of the players involved in the pot, his likelihood of being able to steal a pot, how much this call would help him get paid off when he has a real hand, how well he can read his opponent's post-flop play, etc. So when he spends a long time deciding whether to call with 32o on the button, I assure you it is not because he doesn't want to fold this garbage hand. It's probably because he's running through his mind whether he can win this hand after the flop without showing down his hand. And notice that at that final table, most of his opponents were very scared of him -- and he exploited it for maximum benefit.

[SossMan]

[PokerPaul]

some good points jazz.....

I do think he is a good player, and that his post flop play appears good....however, in my humble opinion, post flop he merely switches from maniac to calling station, or trapping if he catches strong.

For instance he stay in with 10 3 on some big bets.
Flops 23J..i think...stays with a big bet, turn 10, river 3.....thats luck, but he did well to keep opponent in and call big river bet.

And the following hand is basically the one that won it for him, although i do feel that he played it wrong and did not deserve the win based on his play from this one hand at least (not saying he didnt deserve to win tourney as a whole, but this hand was turning point which he got very lucky on and overcame big odds.

Final headsup matchup ...he has A6 offsuit up against AJ who made a big preflop bet, which he calls down.

Flop AT8. Big lead bet by AJ, he calls here....which i feel is a terrible call. Turn 9. Another big turn bet by AJ...again he calls.....another horrible call in my opinion.

Then River 6....literally, the only card that can save his butt. ANY other value he's gone.

It happens though that AJ now checks, so hansen knows he can make a big bet, which he does, and stupidly, in my opinion, AJ calls down..

AJ in this position must know hes beat.

AT986 board....he's gottta put Hanson on an Ace at least, so any AK AQ AT A9 A8 A7 or A6 has him beat, and the very best case scenario he's looking at is hansen has AJ also, so they'd only split pot. So he stubbornly decides to call the big river bet by hansen ..and its practically game over.

Hansen is great in that he is fearless, but i think his strategy requires more luck to succeed than others...

[Nottom]

[ QUOTE ]
Flop AT8. Big lead bet by AJ, he calls here....which i feel is a terrible call. Turn 9. Another big turn bet by AJ...again he calls.....another horrible call in my opinion.

Then River 6....literally, the only card that can save his butt. ANY other value he's gone.

[/ QUOTE ]

From what I remember the other guy checked the turn in this hand ... or bet really small.

[JustPlayingSmart]

He's won 3 WPT events and was basically a coinflip away from winning a 4th. Clearly, he must be doing something right. In these shorthanded games, a lot of times it isn't the cards that matter. It's how you play your opponents.

From the WPT last week: Randy Jensen limps 93o, and the big blind (I think it was Barry) raises with 88. Randy calls this raise, knowing he is way behind now, but also knowing that he has position on his opponent. A lot of people criticized this call, but I actually liked it. He has a pretty good shot at winning this pot by outplaying this opponent, and he might also be able to rattle Barry a little by showing him a bluff with 93o (though I think Barry was fairly immune to this form of attack).

The flop came Q44 and Barry checked. I think Randy realized here that he was gonna have a tough time winning this pot, especially since it appears likely that Barry may just check and call, playing the role of bluff catcher. So Randy checks as well. The turn is a 3, actually giving Randy a pair. Barry bets a moderate amount, and Randy folds. I think his judgment here was actually very good. He made a play that has a decent probability of success (flop of KJ4 he can probably win the pot against 88), but when he decided his chances of stealing the pot were small, he decided not to throw more money in.

I think Gus plays in a similar fashion. If the flop was Q33 in this case, then it's likely that Randy wins a good-sized pot. And that is what happened in some of the hands Gus played (specifically the 10 3 hand, where Andy Bloch had AT and the board was 3 x x T 3).

[colgin]

[ QUOTE ]
In these shorthanded games, a lot of times it isn't the cards that matter.

[/ QUOTE ]

Most of the tournament play is not shorthanded. The 6 players they show on TV as the final table is not representative of the full table action that has preceeded it for several days.

[JustPlayingSmart]

[ QUOTE ]
The 6 players they show on TV as the final table is not representative of the full table action that has preceeded it for several days.

[/ QUOTE ]

But that is the stuff we see on TV, and is all the original statement could have been based on.