Although “The Great Dane” Gus Hansen has been nearly unstoppable thus far in 2011, he’s encountered a major downswing as of late. The player who finished 2010 near the top of the leaderboard in the wrong category, has recently shown glimpses of his former self by donating nearly $1 million of his profits in 2011 to several Full Tilt Poker regulars.
While the Full Tilt Poker pro didn’t lose a million dollars in one sitting, losing it over the course of a week really doesn’t help remedy the pain of his dramatic downfall nonetheless.
Players such as Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, NoPasaran, gavz101 and Tom “durrrr” Dwan basically had their way with Hansen at the Pot-Limit Omaha tables. Regardless of whether it was Cap-PLO or the more swingy uncapped game, Hansen couldn’t turn the tables on his friendly rivals. $300/$600 was usually the limit, and even with over 8,500 hands played through the course of the week Hansen still managed to drop $970K.
Although there have been several opponents willing to wait for there shot at the Great Dane, his main opponent during this span was none other Phil Galfond, a player whom most consider to be the moste creative and adaptive PLO player on the planet. While Hansen was likely aware he was playing the best PLO player in the world, he certainly has improved his Pot-Limit Omaha skill a ton, and probably underestimated the implied edge of the matchup.
But, let’s make things clear, the edge over the past week was undoubtedly delegated to Galfond.
Throughout the first few months of 2011, Hansen has steadily been at or near the top of the leaderboard in overall earnings. His ability to take apart his competition in the lesser-known Draw games that have been recently introduced to Full Tilt Poker has significantly improved his bottom line, and we can be sure that he’ll take more time to continue playing those games.
Despite Hansen’s rare downswing so far in April, he’s still the overall leader in earnings for the year with over $3 million in profit. His nearest competitor is last year’s biggest winner, Daniel “jungleman12″ Cates, who has certainly spent some time improving his overall game as well and currently has $2 million in earnings for the year.
As Cates continues to dominate the online poker world, his closest friend Scott “Urnotindanger2″ Palmer is doing the same at similar stakes. While the two friends certainly participate against one another from time to time in 6-max online games, both of their graphs have still managed to retain an upward trend. While Hansen was busy spewing money, Palmer was busy engulfing it, eventually to the tune of $612K over the first week of April.
While players such as Cates, Galfond and Palmer have certainly helped ignite a burning desire for profit over the course of the week, unknown high-stakes player Cadillac1944 may just be the catalyst that has sparked all of the huge swings in total. The player who came on to the scene in late 2010 with monsterous losses in PLO, was back once again at the $300/$600 game only to receive a ton of action by all of the biggest names.
Being the target of nearly every high-stakes Full Tilt pro eventually led to Cadillac1944 having a catastrophic week as well. The PLO player finished with $396K in losses.
Tom “durrrr” Dwan, who still can’t seem to gain traction in any poker session (including the Durrrr Challenge), also lost $225,000 at the tables. He’s currently the biggest loser thus far in 2011 with a staggering $2 million in losses on Full Tilt Poker. Dwan has mentioned in several blogs that he never plans to log another losing year, so let’s hope he digs (and plays) himself out this hole by the start of 2012.
HSR will continue to keep you posted on everything that happens in the high-stakes forums, as soon as we hear it.
NOTE: Due to recent events happening on April 15th, 2011, we recommend you try out other poker sites apart from Full Tilt Poker – we have taken the liberty of identifying the best options listed here, with a special look at Carbon Poker and the giant poker room Titan Poker. Keep the poker games coming there!
