Nosebleed round-up

Player of the week: Gus Hansen

What can you say about Gus Hansen that hasn’t already been said? With three WPT titles, a WSOP bracelet, and more than $9 million in live winnings, the Great Dane is a true legend of the modern game. But in years gone by, Hansen has struggled on the virtual felt. Well, not anymore.

A few weeks back we mentioned how Hansen had quickly overshadowing his loses for the past 12 months with more than $2 million in high-stakes winnings. But as March pulls to a close, he’s added another $2.5 million to that healthy sum, taking his total earnings for the year past the $4.5 million mark.

Now the biggest earner of 2011 by some distance, Hansen laid waste to the competition this week, taking Dan ‘jungleman12’ Cates for $108k and Scott ‘URnotINdanger2’ Palmer for $385k on Full Tilt’s PLO tables.

And overall it wasn’t a great week for Palmer. Actually, scratch that. It’s been a horrid couple of months for the American.

Rewind to January, and Palmer was one of the hottest pros on the high-stakes circuit, with just over $2 million in winnings. But since then the wheels have well and truly come off and URnotINdanger2 has donked off more than $1.2 million from his roll.

The past seven days have cost him $995,345 making him PokerPlayer’s high-stakes fish of the week. Sorry, Scott.

Hand of the week:

Our pick of this week’s monster pots comes from Palmer Nad Hansen’s PLO bloodbath. The high-stakes bout saw some of poker’s biggest online pots in 2011, including this $286,985 whopper.

With blinds $500/$1,000, Palmer raised from the button, Hansen three-bet to $9,000 and Palmer made in $27,000 and both players saw a 8d-Kd-3c flop. Hansen check-raised all-in for $116,493 and Palmer snap called with As-7d-Ad-9h for the nut-flush draw. Hansen, though, showed Jd-Qd-Kh-10h for top pair and a whole host of draws.

The duo chose to run it twice. Hansen won the first when Jc-Qc came on the turn and river, and Palmer still couldn’t find that elusive diamond second time round, 10c-7c again giving Hansen the win.

Winners*

Gus Hansen  $1,558,775
PepperoniF  $344,085
OMGClayAiken  $327,099
David Oppenheim  $283,989
EazyPeazy  $276,986

Losers*

URnotINdanger2  -$836,754
Seb86  -$292,442
harrington25  -$257,329
Matt Hawrilenko  -$243,586
NoPasaran  -$241,806

*figures provided by HighStakesDB