Carlos Mortensen “El Matador“

Birthplace
Ambato, Ecuador

Hometown
Las Vegas

Birthday
April 13

Total Winnings
$6,406,930

Carlos “The Matador” Mortensen is arguably the most successful player in the history of the WPT.  He currently holds the record as the all-time money winner on the tour with an astonishing $5,754,308 in WPT winnings.  The bulk of that money can be attributed to Mortensen’s three victories, which ties him with only Gus Hansen for the most WPT titles.  Mortensen’s long list of WPT records doesn’t end there though.  His win at the Season IV Championship event was the largest payout in WPT history worth a whopping $3,970,415.

Mortensen has been a dominant presence on the poker scene for a decade now.  Born in Ecaudor, Mortensen moved to Spain as a teenager and found poker after he was done with school.  From there, Mortensen relocated to Atlantic City and it was only a few years before Mortensen went from the AC cash games to winning the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2001.  Mortensen is the only player to have ever won both the WSOP Main Event and the WPT Championship, a remarkable feat that will likely never be matched given the large field size of both tournaments.

In fact, Mortensen’s overall performance on the WPT is pretty tough to beat.  He final tabled the Borgata Poker Open in Season II and followed that up with a $1 million win at the Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship at the Bellagio in Season III.  Mortensen’s Bellagio success continued with his WPT Championship win in Season IV where he bested a field of 639 players in the $25,000 buy-in event.  More recently, Mortensen proved his WPT success extended beyond Las Vegas when he won the inaugural Hollywood Poker Open at the Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg, Indiana during Season VIII.

Mortensen is typically soft spoken at the table, but his aggressive style of play speaks for itself and resulted in his nickname, The Matador.  He is one of only three players with three different seven-figure scores on his poker resume, which puts him in the good company of only Phil Ivey and Dan Harrington.  He is often lauded for the consistency of his performance and has one of the highest returns on investment in WPT history, averaging $100,000 in winnings per tournament over the course of the WPT’s first eight seasons.  When Mortensen isn’t crushing WPT fields, he can still be found at the place he got his start in the US poker scene; the cash game tables.

His poker accomplishments rival that of seasoned veterans, but Mortensen is actually just 37 years-old with decades of future poker success still ahead of him.