EDITORS NOTE: The statistics gathered for this article are from High Stakes (http://www.highstakesdb.com) and are only for action on FullTilt Poker.
Gus 'The Great Dane' Hansen played more like the Hollywood Chihuahua in 2009. In a year that saw most of the top players making money in online games, Gus dropped five and a half million to bring his losses since January 1st, 2007 to nearly seven million dollars. He started out with a great 1st Quarter, netting over $3.2 million dollars as FullTilt's winnings leader. Then the bottom began to drop out for the wild player many claim is responsible for the uber-aggressive play found online today. A $3 million loss in the 2nd quarter negated most of his 1st Quarter winnings. He followed that with nearly three and a half million dollar 3rd Quarter loss. Only the play of Isildur1, with both his $5.5 million dollar winning streak against Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and his $4.2 million losing session against Brian Hastings leading to $2.216 million total loss for the quarter knocked Hansen off the worst losing player pedestal he held for half of the year.
Five of the top half-dozen names atop FullTilt's 'Biggest Loser' category are in poker this year were big name players. Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Isildur1 had winning years in Hold'em on FullTilt, but had multi-million dollar losses playing Omaha.
In only six weeks in late 2009, when he first appeared as Isildur1 on FullTilt in late October until; his bankroll clearing loss to Brian Hastings, he played 166,073 hands between Pot-limit Omaha and No-limit Hold'em, with blinds ranging from $50/$100 to $500/$1,000. Much of the time he was on six tables at once, raking up 4,000 hand sessions a day. It was an amazing span that saw him relieve $5.5 million from of Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and take over half a million dollars from David Benyamine. During the same time, he also lost $3.8 million to Brian Hastings ($4.2 million in a single session on December 11th), nearly $3 million to Phil Ivey, another $2 million to Patrik Antonius, as well as a million and a half dollars to Brian Townsend. He made $2,390,796 in 74 thousand hands this year playing No-limit Hold'em.
Isildur1 stated that he had only been playing Pot-limit Omaha for eight months and it is his weakest game. It seems he was right, losing $4,620,058 in 92 thousand hands, though to be fair, it was the one session of 2800 hands with Brian Hastings that cost him $4.2 million. Actually, it may not be his inexperience in the game, as much as his ego and his inability to know when to quit, that cost him his entire FullTilt bankroll.
Tom Dwan lost $3.25 million in January 2009, made it all back by May 2009, topped out at plus $2.5 million and in the next six months, lost $9 million more, finally recovering back $2.5 million in the month of December. Tom Dwan, would have not had a bad year if he had been able to figure out the hyper-aggressive Swede Isuldur1. In a pure definition of the ebb and flow of variance, durrrr had a year of ups and downs. There was a swing of over $9 million between his $2.5 million dollar high on July 22nd to his low of -$6.88 million on December 2nd. On a positive note, he did pick up $2.75 million during the rest of the December to end the year at only $4.5 million in the red. Dwan's high note for the year has been hes recovery in his Million Dollar Durr Challenge with Patrik Antonius, where he is now approaching the one million dollar mark.
Gus's $7 million losses since January 2007 pale in comparison to the losses suffered by the billionaire founder of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Lalibertie. Often, it is common to hide a player's real name from the public and presumably, the IRS (or their compatriots in other countries). If you take the names attributed to Guy, you get one of the most inept players to ever play the game. Some of the other screen names purportedly used by the billionaire over the last three years are noataima with minus $7.12 million, Lady Marmelade with losses of $6.63 million, patatino with over $5.9 million and elmariachimacho with $4.16 million. The combined loses for the last three years are an astonishing $23,845,228 in 177,574 hands over 1076 sessions. When you do the math, it works out to a loss of $22,261 a session, losing an average of $134 each and every hand.
Guy Lalibertie is not the first billionaire to test his mettle against the best players in the world. Early in the 21st century, Andrew Beal, a Texas banking and real estate mogul had an ongoing poker game against a group of players known as 'The Corporation,' since they pooled their money to compete against Beal and reduce their variance. It was not until deep into the competition that a $10 million plus run by Phil Ivey gave the professional players a winning record.
It is an interesting contrast to another billionaire poker player, Bill Gates. Alan Miller, a local player at Foxwood’s Casino in Connecticut, was waiting for a $10/$20 high-stakes table to open when he saw someone who appeared to be Bill Gates playing at a $3/$6 table. Miller confirmed it was Gates with the floor manager and received permission to talk to him. He walked over and asked the richest man in the world, “Why are you playing at such a low-stakes table?” Gates replied, “It’s a lot funner down here, buddy.”
Detailed tables of 2007 - 2009 Online Winners and Losers are from FullTilt Poker and provided by High Stakes (http://www.highstakesdb.com).
2007 - 2009 Biggest Winners and Losers
