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When Gus Hansen sits down at the poker table, we've learned to expect the unexpected: the monster call, the any-two-cards bluff, the (seemingly) outrageous value bet. But "unexpected" should not be synonymous with "crazy." In fact, after reading Hansen's fine new book, you may be reminded of Hamlet in Shakespeare's great tragedy. As Polonius says of the prince's erratic behavior, "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."

There is a great deal of method in the Great Dane's apparent madness, and Every Hand Revealed, his wire-to-wire chronicle of his $1.2 million score at the main event of the 2007 Aussie Millions, should convince the poker world that Hansen is entirely sane — and a truly brilliant poker player.

The book articulates no overarching theory and very few generalizations. Instead, it takes an entirely different tack to explaining poker strategy: "All the hands that I played are turned face up and every decision I made is explained in my pursuit of the title," Hansen writes. There's a little prose to introduce and recap each day, but most of these 384 pages are devoted to specific hands and situations: the cards he was dealt, his actions and those of his opponents, and the reasoning behind his decisions.

What emerges is a powerful portrait of what successful poker is really about: a series of decisions based on (inevitably) incomplete information. Hansen used a recorder to take notes (see interview below for more details) after each hand, and they go far beyond the mechanics of the action. We learn about opponents and their capabilities, about recent actions and how they might affect the current hand, about the potential of the bubble (particularly profitable for an aggressive player like Hansen), and about opportunities, like the last few hands of the day or just after the blinds and antes increase.

Over and over, we get to experience Hansen's decision-making process: the good, the bad, and the ugly (like when he turned over what he thought was ace high which turned out to be the nut flush). It may be easy to be honest after taking down a huge title, but Hansen seems very up front about his mistakes. As he readily acknowledges, sometimes you make a wrong decision and get a good result, sometimes you get make the right decision and get burned, and sometimes you make the right decision and win the pot.

It's a cliché to say that poker is a game of situations, but few books have demonstrated the truth of that adage more powerfully than Every Hand Revealed. That said, Hansen does articulate his core poker philosophy: "My kind of poker requires constantly attacking your opponents, constantly accumulating chips, constantly keeping track of pot odds and winning percentages, and constantly gearing up as blinds and antes increase." That's easy to say and easy to understand, but it's still hard to execute. This book shows you how one pro executes, hand by hand, moment by moment. (Aggression certainly paid off in Melbourne: Hansen won 70 pots (from a total of 329 hands he played) uncontested.)

The prose is competent without being brilliant, but that's quite an accomplishment for a native Danish speaker. And I wished for a little more color about the event, a bit more sense of the drama involved in going from $20,000 chips to nearly $15 million to capture the title. But that's just my greed as a reader talking. This is a unique glimpse into the thought processes of a unique player; Gus Hansen has made a rich contribution to the literature of poker with Every Hand Revealed.