Gus Hansen's Master Class (PSI on FSN

[Beavis68]

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Get over it. He's not lucky. It's not an abberation. His post flop play is so good that he can afford to play marginal holdings, and when he has a real hand, he's much more likely to get paid off.

Just beacuse you don't understand his success doesn't make it luck.

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HE definitely makes some good plays, but then he gets lucky on top of it, time and time again.

[Dan Mezick]

Gus Hansen's seems to be playing the game at a level few people have ever played at.

The way he plays are incomprehensible to many (including myself) probably for that very reason.

His success if even greater if you factor in the relatively low number of events he plays.

Nobody "lucky" is this lucky for this long. Dismissing Hansen as lucky is by far the easiest way of explaining his results.

I bet the guy Hansen is loaded with natural talent, AND works like a dog on his game.

[gergery]

Gus's style is steal, steal, steal, and hope to suck out when caught. It's effective because
1) most of the time people have nothing and have to fold,
2) Gus makes good reads and tends not to steal when others have strong hands, and can fold when he needs to,
3) he tends to do this when he has position and against opponets who are not too loose, something the casual WPT viewer doesn't realize,
4) people tend not to try to steal his blinds or bluff him, because they know he'll be playing with them, giving him another source of chips.
5) When he gets "lucky", you'll notice he is almost never a very big dog, and often has pot odds or a big stack to allow this him to do this. He is *supposed to* draw out on others 1/3rd of the time or so -- its not lucky when that happens, just math.

And lastly, he makes good TV, and the hands he bluffs people out of make good TV, so we get a skewed version of what actually happens due to the magic of TV editing.

It truly amazes me how these new players come in thinking Gus just plays any two cards and gets lucky. But then again they are the reason i make money playing poker, so god bless Gus and the WPT.

--Greg

[Desdia72]

[ QUOTE ]
Gus Hansen's seems to be playing the game at a level few people have ever played at.

The way he plays are incomprehensible to many (including myself) probably for that very reason.

His success if even greater if you factor in the relatively low number of events he plays.

Nobody "lucky" is this lucky for this long. Dismissing Hansen as lucky is by far the easiest way of explaining his results.

I bet the guy Hansen is loaded with natural talent, AND works like a dog on his game.

[/ QUOTE ]

when you're regularly playing big cash games against some of the most elite and deep pocketed players on the planet. however, he still gets lucky...no doubt about it. there's nothing spectacular about calling an all-in with Q 8 against Q J and catching an 8 on the river to win. there's nothing that you can do to work on your game so much to where it makes Q 8 a favorite over Q J with a Queen on the flop. there's nothing spectacular about Gus's suckouts with weaker hands (like his A J against Chip Reese's A K). i don't buy the argument of it being postflop play. if he's not as lucky as he seems to be, apparently that's not what TV seems to want to spotlight. if you raise with a marginal hand (i.e. the Q x hand in the WPT PS Caribbean event)and beat a guy who goes all-in with J J, you got lucky. there's nothing spectacular about that. i think Gus is good, i think he's alot more fortunate (lucky) than most.

[Dan Mezick]

A quick read of SUPER SYSTEM 1.0 reveals that this is the way Doyle played table-stakes (non-tournament) no-limit Texas Hold'Em. You steal, steal steal small pots and then you take that equity and gamble, gamble, gamble for BIG pots. I mean, this is what Hansen does with some tournament adjustments.

And it's working.

Brunson talks about how people called him LUCKY (like Hansen) because of these Brunson-brand, super aggressive ways of approaching the game. How Hansen makes this SUPER SYSTEM stuff work in a tournament format is a special magic only he (apparently) understands.

Doyle himself said the SUPER SYSTEM way of playing NLTH was not completely correct for tournament play. Yet Hansen SEEMS to be pulling it off...he's playing classic SUPER SYSTEM Doyle brand NLTH in tournaments.

[cockandbull]

im not quite sure what all the fuss is about. i think gergerys post covers most of the thinking behind his play, but i'd like to add that because of the increases in prize money for 1st it makes sense to try to steel, take being a small dog if the pot he wins gives him more of a chance of winning. i'd take being a 60/40 dog if winning meant i got a x% bigger prize.

im sure thats what guss thinks of when waying up a call. i would say hes using ss as his base, but using some of the tpfap as well.

i'd be interested to see if the game he plays is the same in the early rounds, because from what i see of wpt he seems to make the final table very often.

[CrisBrown]

Hi gergery,

There's one other point that I'd add to your list: Gus' style tempts/forces other players to play marginal hands against him, or be run off the table. So, by playing hands that run well hot-and-cold, Gus figures to be not that big a dog against most of the hands he's going to play big pots against.

Gus opens a lot of pots, but he doesn't reraise or call raises/reraises without a good hot-and-cold hand. That is, a hand like QT or J9, where he's likely to have two live cards. New players are more likely to get into these pots on hands like A5s or KTs, which look good on their own, but are more likely to be dominated in a raised pot.

So long as he has two live cards, and isn't up against a big pair, he'll rarely be more than a 2:1 underdog, and often closer to 3:2. So those "miracle" outdraws aren't quite the miracles they appear.

Cris

[The_Tracker]

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"BS" 99.9% of his so called skill is "Luck".

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99.9% of this statment is ignorant.

The .1% that isn't is the punctuation.

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What-ever.

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So you are saying he "lucked" his way to several WPT and other big stakes buy-in tournement wins and cashes.

Mmmmkay

[lolita16]

I missed this broadcast regretably, as my roommate changed channels on the satellite while watching tv. (Tivo should be smart enough to program idiot channel changing. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ) I hope to catch it on a rerun.

My opinion of Gus's play also has changed considerably after watching him a bit more. One play that comes to mind is the reraise with the 62 against Hoyt in the Caribbean event from 03. His play seemed to me to be one in which he read Hoyt for a big pair and deduced he could steal the pot if an ace flopped. His 100K bet on the flop was artwork. He would have stolen this pot against most top notch pros in this spot. I'm still not sure if Hoyt got stubborn in his call or if he read Gus for a bluff. Had the queen not fallen on the turn, I would like to have seen if Gus would have taken another stab at it and if Hoyt would have layed it down at that point. It almost seemed as though Gus "knew" that Hoyt had QQ, but perhaps I'm giving him a bit too much credit.

Gus plays very differently in different situations. He has the ability to terrify the newbies and put even the greatest players on tilt and off their usual great game. This is an earmark of a top flight pro in my view.

Many have written of the great Stu that playing against him was like playing with your cards flipped up. I have to wonder if that will eventually be said of Gus as well.

[samjjones]

[ QUOTE ]
Gus's style is steal, steal, steal, and hope to suck out when caught. It's effective because
1) most of the time people have nothing and have to fold,
2) Gus makes good reads and tends not to steal when others have strong hands, and can fold when he needs to,
3) he tends to do this when he has position and against opponets who are not too loose, something the casual WPT viewer doesn't realize,
4) people tend not to try to steal his blinds or bluff him, because they know he'll be playing with them, giving him another source of chips.
5) When he gets "lucky", you'll notice he is almost never a very big dog, and often has pot odds or a big stack to allow this him to do this. He is *supposed to* draw out on others 1/3rd of the time or so -- its not lucky when that happens, just math.

And lastly, he makes good TV, and the hands he bluffs people out of make good TV, so we get a skewed version of what actually happens due to the magic of TV editing.

It truly amazes me how these new players come in thinking Gus just plays any two cards and gets lucky. But then again they are the reason i make money playing poker, so god bless Gus and the WPT.

--Greg

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a very astute post. As someone who plays a style similar to Gus, I agree with all points.