Titan Poker
Carlos Mortensen is one of the greatest poker players of this decade. El Matador, his moniker on the poker scene, has had tremendous success on the professional tour and online playing Full Tilt Poker.
Carlos is a garrulous, outgoing player who is revered by his peers and adored by his fans. Carlos is known for his loose, unbridled, fearless style of poker play. It is his unpredictability that keeps him in good stead at the poker table. Since his first participation in a professional poker event—1999’s World Series of Poker in Las Vegas—Carlos has blazed a trail of unmitigated successes.
Now entering his tenth year as a professional poker player, Carlos has amassed almost $8.5 million in winnings. Not bad for a guy who started playing poker in 1997!
The Beginning: Juan Carlos Mortensen was born on April 13, 1972 in Ambato, Ecuador. He moved to Madrid, Spain when he was a child and remained there until his mid-twenties, when, having taken a late-in-life interest in Poker, he decided to play full-time.
With nothing to lose and a voracious appetite for Poker, Carlos moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, the Poker Capital of the World. His fellow Spaniards convinced him to play in the 1999 World Series of Poker. Although he had little success in that tournament, the competition of the event fuelled his desire to become a great poker player.
Carlos enjoys playing live tournaments and has had uncanny success at online Full Tilt poker. As he enters into his second decade as a professional poker player, Juan Carlos Mortensen’s best days of competitive poker are still in front of him. Known as Carlos in America, El Matador still feels more comfortable conversing in the Spanish vernacular.
Career Highlights: The mercurial rise of Juan Carlos Mortensen to the ranks of professional poker player began with an unexpected victory in 2001 at the World Series of Poker main event. For this win, Carlos collected $1.5 million. He has, since then, finished in the money 15 times in the World Series of Poker, has earned two titles and three table finishes in the World Poker Tour, and had one money finish in the European Poker Tour.
His largest winning pot to date was the 2007 WPT Season 5, WPT World Championship, which resulted in almost $4 million for the first place finish.
Epilogue: The saga of swashbuckling Carlos Mortensen continues every time he sits down to play competitive poker. He is already the first player to win both the WSOP and WPT Championships, and has had equal success in the Full Tilt Poker room, his venue of choice.
Carlos and fellow pro poker player, Cecilia Reyes-Mortensen, divorced in 2006 after a decade of marriage. He loves to ride All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) and goes bowling to relieve some of the stressors of professional poker play.
You’ll know him when you see him. Carlos is the player whose chips are stacked in pyramid-like structures. Perhaps when he retires he’ll begin a second career as an architectural designer. Thankfully, for now, we can all learn from and enjoy watching Carlos Mortensen, one of the most charismatic players in poker today, go “all in”.
