Denmark has given the world a Main Event winner already, when young Peter Eastgate won it in 2008; and a highly entertaining poker powerhouse in Gus Hansen, poker bad boy and favorite guest of televised poker shows. 2010 Main Event 25th place finisher Mads Wissing could turn out to be a bit of both: an entertaining personality with an interesting life story and a good chance at the highest honor in poker.
The Danish player – who has been living in Spain for a few years now – plays mainly online poker, but breaks his routine a few times a year for live events, mainly those in the European Poker Tour.
Wissing started playing poker when he was in high school, and by the age of 17 he was joining “juicy” (his description) Five Card Draw games with restaurant and business owners. He got into Hold’em when his cousin won the Danish Championship in the most popular form of poker. Like most of his fellow Danes, Wissing was inspired to play more poker by Gus “The Great Dane” Hansen’s repeated World Poker Tour wins
2007 was a good year for Wissing, who won the Party Poker $300,000 tournament twice, along with the Scandinavian Open in Copenhagen. He started 2010 in style with a nice finish and cash at the EPT Copenhagen, and then Wissing decided to take his hot streak to the largest game in the world, where he made a deep run into the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event.
Wissing fell just short of repeating Eastgate’s 2008 feat and becoming the second Dane to win the World Series of Poker’s most prestigious event. What is a fact is that Scandinavian players are no longer a running joke in the poker world.
