Carlos Mortensen, Poker Biography

by Jennifer Newell

Carlos Mortensen was born in 1972 in Ambato, Ecuador, though his family moved to Madrid, Spain, during his childhood. It was years later in Madrid that he discovered poker and began playing on a low level, only to continue improving and quickly become a force in the game.

Carlos Mortensen's Profile

By 1999, only two years after he began playing poker, Mortensen was backed by friends who sent him to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He failed to cash there, but he traveled to Los Angeles later that year and played in a tournament series there, making the final table of a pot-limit hold'em event. It was only the beginning of what would be an amazing career that he likely couldn't have imagined at the time.

The following year, however, Mortensen played the WSOP again and made his first final table there in a $3,000 NLHE event, finishing in seventh for $22,575. He made several other final tables that year as he traveled from Los Angeles to the East Coast, but in 2001, he won his first tournament, a $300 LHE event at the L.A. Poker Classic for more than $116K. He won a NLHE event at the Shooting Stars in Northern California the following month, and he was on a roll that took him back to the WSOP. He played in that 2001 WSOP $10K Main Event and not only made the final table but won the World Championship tournament for $1.5 million.

Mortensen was quickly one of the most respected players in the global poker scene, and he continued to provide results. He made the final table of a WSOP event in 2002, and he won events at the California State Poker Championship and the World Poker Finals that year. By 2003, he won his second WSOP bracelet, taking down a $5,000 LHE event for more than $251K, and later that year, he made his first World Poker Tour final table, finishing fourth at the WPT Borgata Poker Open Main Event for $70,500.

His first World Poker Tour win came in 2004 at the $10K Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, where he won $1 million. He also became a fixture on other televised poker shows like the Poker Superstars, where he won a fair amount as well. Meanwhile, he was picking up titles in events on the WSOP Circuit and final tabling more WSOP events.

In 2007, he won another WPT title, this one being the WPT Championship in Las Vegas for nearly $4 million. And in 2010, he won yet another WPT at the Hollywood Poker Open in Indiana. Most recently, Mortensen won the $10K Australian Heads-Up Championship at the Aussie Millions, made the final table of the WPT L.A. Poker Classic, and cashed in three WSOP events and one at the WSOP Europe in Cannes.

Nicknamed El Matador, Mortensen is one of the most feared tournament poker players in the world, having accrued more than $10.7 million in his decades at the tables. He spent several years as a sponsored player of Full Tilt Poker, though that relationship ended in 2011. With some of the biggest titles under his belt, he is one of the highest money earners, all while remaining humble and quiet at the tables.

Read Carlos Mortensen's Profile for more information including his tournament results and total winnings.

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Jennifer Newell is a freelance writer, originally from St. Louis but now living in Los Angeles. She fell in love with poker while working at WPT and began writing about it in 2005.