Rumors were swirling last week that Full Tilt Poker had added Carlos Mortensen to its roster of pros and, despite the lack of any official announcement, it does appear that “The Matador” is officially the newest sponsored player of the second largest online poker room.
Mortensen had actually been one of the more prominent Full Tilt pros in the past, but during the last couple of years, he was not attached to any online poker room. He has recently been spotted playing Mixed games on Full Tilt with his name in red. For those who have not seen him online yet, but want to see his fun avatar in which he is dressed as a matador, navigate to the Full Tilt Poker installation directory on your hard drive and drill down to the Graphics > Table > Avatars > Pro folder. Mortensen is in folder #10.
In addition to being out of the online poker spotlight, Mortensen has also pared down his live tournament schedule in the last few years. Since winning the $25,000 World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship for $3,970,415 in 2007, he has only had a dozen recorded cashes, half of which were in the last two runnings of the World Series of Poker (WSOP). He had two cashes in January, including a final table in the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, so perhaps that and his reunion with Full Tilt indicate that he is starting to play more again.
The 38 year old Mortensen – whose real name is actually Juan Carlos – won the 2001 WSOP Main Event and is still the only player of Hispanic origin to win the cherished title. He is also the only player to have won both the WSOP and WPT Championships, a distinction that will be very difficult for anyone to match. All told, Mortensen has two WSOP bracelets and two WPT titles. With $8,894,713 in career live tournament winnings, he ranks 13th on the all-time money list.
Mortensen was born in Ecuador to a Danish father and Spanish mother and moved to Spain when he was 15 years old. He got his start in poker in 1997 when some people started playing at the club that he worked at. He was invited to sit down and promptly lost $100. Frustrated, he mulled over his mistakes all night, went back the next day, and doubled his money. After winning for a few more days, he decided to play poker for a living.
He cashed in a WSOP event for the first time in 2000 and, in 2001, decided to to the United States. It was that year that he finally established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the poker world, first winning $116,722 in the $300 Limit Hold’em event at the L.A. Poker Classic and following that up a few months later with his WSOP Main Event victory.
