The 2013 World Series of Poker is one-third of the way finished and almost all of poker’s biggest names are in attendance…the keyword being “almost” every star player.

Gus Hansen has been one of the most notable absentees from the 2013 WSOP thus far, and he’s got a very good reason for missing the early portion. A couple of weeks ago, the Great Dane was in Macau to play the HK$1 million (US$130,000) buy-in GuangDong Ltd Asia Millions Main Event. After finishing up at the 2013 GDAM, Hansen was all set to travel to the United States for the WSOP. But there was just one problem – he lost his passport.

As PokerNYHederne reported, Hansen was traveling in a Hong Kong taxi and somehow lost his passport in the cab. Unable to recover this important document, the Danish poker star was prevented from flying to the US. He passed the time by playing high stakes FLO8 and 2-7 Triple Draw games at Full Tilt Poker and making $176,696 in profits.

After a week of being stuck in Hong Kong, Hansen obtained a new passport and has finally departed for Las Vegas. Now he’ll have a chance to build on his very impressive career, which includes $11,210,072 in live poker tournament winnings – $1,192,748 of which has come through WSOP cashes.

In proportion to his overall tourney winnings, Hansen’s single WSOP gold bracelet isn’t that great. So earning another bracelet will definitely be on the Dane’s mind when he takes the felt at the Rio.

Of course, you can’t measure Hansen’s career in terms of bracelets since he has some other very notable accomplishments. He became the first man to win three World Poker Tour titles, doing so in less than a year’s time. Plus Hansen’s $11.2 million in tournament earnings rank first on Denmark’s all-time list, which is no small feat when you consider that 2008 WSOP Main Event champ Peter Eastgate ($11.13 million) is also Danish.