WPT Championship 2007

Posted by Lasse Hamar 20/05/07

Before we knew him as the spanish «Matador» in the poker world, now he can be renamed to anything resembling giant, champion or number one. Carlos Mortensen has made poker history and the poker world is impressed. He recently won the World Poker Tour Championships at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and 4 million dollars, this just to add to his WSOP Main Event Bracelet and over 6 million dollars in previous tournament prizes. Carlos Mortensen is the first and perhaps the only player for a long time that will hold the titles of both WPT and WSOP Main Event winner. We met up with «The Giant», formerly known as «The Matador».

Mortensen became the first and only player to ever win both a WPT World Championship and a WSOP Main Event. Mortensen also won the top prize in the largest prize pool in the fiveyear history of the World Poker Tour. But the victory at the Bellagio did not come easy, he had to turn his short stack into the biggest stack, and when that task what completed he had made one of the most amazing comebacks in any televised poker tournament. Carlos Mortensen played some of the best poker of his life. Actually, the best week of poker in his life, as the tournament lasted seven days. The World Poker Tour Championships featured 639 entrants that included the biggest stars and the best players on the planet. When it was over, Mortensen had all the chips and could embrace the first place prize of $3,970,415.

Final Table Results:

1. Carlos Mortensen $3,970,000

2. Kirk Morrison $2,000,000

3. Paul Lee $1,100,000

4.Guy Laliberte $700,000

5. Tim Phan $465,000

6. Mike Wattel $310,000

Paul Lee started the final table as the chip leader, but his passive play cost him the lead. The entire table played soft the first half hour. The first elimination occurred on hand 21, when Mike Wattel busted out in 6th place. Tim Phan was the next player to bust out. He lost with his 99; they were no match for Kirk Morrison who had pocket rockets to boost the chip advantage in the confrontation. Carlos Mortensen played aggressively and took advantage of Paul Lees play. And when the rest of the table also played a bit too slow, the Spanish bull was there with aggression and welltimed bluffs. He took over the chip lead from Lee, but lost a lot of those chips when he had AQ and saw the flop J–Q–9 when Kirk Morrison held JJ. He now only had 1,1 million chips left, and in the pot he lost to Morrison there were over 16 million chips. The blinds were then 50–100k, but he fought back from his short position. Mortensen picked up a few pots and slowly built his stack. Luckily for him, Guy Laliberte was the next player eliminated in 4th place. Morrison's chip lead peaked at 22 million. He had more than twice as many chips as Mortensen and Lee combined. Mortensen would get some of Morrison's chips after doubling trough him with Qd-8d versus Morrison's 10c6h. Then after almost 90 hands of play he won a monster pot from Paul Lee when he had A9 and saw a A–10–4 flop v Leem. They ended all in and Lee showed 109 that was trailing badly. Mortensen won the pot when none of the last two tens appeared on later streets. The then crippled Paul Lee busted out the very next hand when he was all in with A9 v Kirk Morrison who held A10. When heads-up play began, Morrison led Mortensen by 19.45M to 12.8M. Even though he was out-chipped, most of the pros in the room still considered Mortensen the favourite. Mortensen got himself in trouble by the seventh hand of heads-up play.

Morrison raised pre flop to 1M. Mortensen called. The flop was 10–8–3 and both players checked. The turn was another 10, and Mortensen fired out 1.6M, which Morrison called. The river card was a third ten and Mortensen now bet 4 million. Morrison called and tabled AJ for ace high. This was good opposite Mortensen who had only king high. Later Mortensen doubled up with A10 all in pre flop v K6. After that he used his very aggressive play along with some good timed hands and got back the chip lead. On the 182nd hand of the final table he ended the tournament and took home the title. Mortensen raised to about 5M pre flop, the blinds were at this point almost 1M-2M. Kirk Morrison then moved all in and Mortensen called with KJs that trailed his opponent, who had A4. The flop helped Kirk Morrison when it came 3–4–7. But a jack on the turn gave Mortensen the bigger pair and when the dealer flipped over the 3 of diamonds on the river, Mortensen could write his name in gold in the history book of tournament poker.

Success in all games

Your poker career now has many highs, it is a long list that includes the two big titles, a regular WSOP Bracelet, a regular WPT tournament win and final tables in all kinds of games like Stud, Razz, H.O.R.S.E, Pot-Limit Omaha and Omaha hi/low, and even results from major heads-up tournaments. How did you get to be so good at all of these games? – Well, I have always liked poker, not just Texas Hold`em. I also enjoy playing headsup, shorthanded and the full ring games you find in the big tournaments.

Of all the games, which is your strongest? – I don't know, to be honest, but I like to play heads-up the best. The last couple of years there have been a lot of heads-up tournaments around, so that is good.

This also gives Carlos a chance to visit Spain and one of his favourite casinos, the Gran Casino in Barcelona. They host a €2500 heads-up tournament every spring. This is the premier HU tournament in Europe and Mortensen has played it for the last years. And he has two money finishes to show for it. The best one was in 2005 when he lost his semi-final and got €15.000 for the effort. The Spanish home crowd cheered on their only poker superstar, but he failed to go all the way. He came close the next year as well, but he busted out in the quarter finals, but he will give it a new shoot in 2007. Maybe heads-up champion will be his next big title? – I play a lot of heads-up matches, online I play $5000 tournaments. I played on PokerStars a lot before, with players like Lars Magne (Johnny Lodden) and a lot of other players as well. But now I use my online time at FullTilt.com that also sponsors me into tournaments and I get to play heads-up there. And if any of the readers want to, they can look me up and challenge me to a game mano-a-mano.

With your diversity in your poker games, do you think you can have a shot in the $50.000 H.O.R.S.E event this year? – I don't see why not, I have already won a H.O.R.S.E event, although not at the World Series. But the H.O.R.S.E event is definitely something I'm looking forward to playing. Although it is the toughest poker tournament to win with the insane level of players that enter, I will fight with them all to win that one.

If he can manage a victory there, he will for sure find himself on a shortlist for the greatest poker player of all time.

From Madrid to Vegas

How did your career start? – In my early days at the poker tables back home in Madrid I started to play the Fixed-limit Hold`em game. I was working as a bartender at the time, I think this was around early 1997. I didn't have a lot of money and the game I went to was around 2$–4$ so it wasn't too big. The first day I played I really liked it. The fact that there was a lot of psychology and theory in the game really got me hooked. I have always played chess at a high level and poker was a fresh game that appealed to me. But after the first session I had lost 80 dollars and was determined to get them back. This was on a Monday and it was a really bad start of the week. I went to work at night, and after getting some sleep I got back to the poker room the next day with my mind set on one thing, getting the money back. And when that session ended I had made up for the loosing session the day before.

The week went on and Carlos returned to the card room every day to play this new and exciting game. – I won around 200 dollars every day and when Saturday came I had made more money in those days then I could do in two weeks working as a bartender. So I decided to quit my work bartending and became a poker player that very Sunday.

That would turn out to be a very wise decision for the young Carlos. He went on for a few months and got to be better and better and raking in pot after pot and seldom had a loosing session. But this game was a private club and not many new players came in to play, the group of players was of around 12 people and soon they had all lostenough money to the newly turned poker pro. The game dried up and Carlos needed to find other venues to give his new profession a chance. But poker in Spain and Europe at that time was not like the scene we see today. He did some research and found out that the East Coast of the US was his best option to continue to live as a pro. And so he went on to Atlantic City to grind on the lower limits like 3$–6$, and the same thing happened there as it did back home in Madrid, he just kept winning and winning. He took a step up in limits the next day and kept winning there to, and so did the trip evolve, every day going back to his room a winner. And he kept taking one step up whenever he felt he had enough money to do so. The three last days he played 20–40 limit and when he packed his suitcase he could stick his winnings of over 10.000 dollars in his pocket and he headed back home to Spain.

The tournament trail

After some commuting back and forth he decided to move to Las Vegas for a while and got up to high limits around the year 2000. Then he was playing at the Commerce as high as 300–600 and 500–1000 Fixed Limit. He played opposite the likes of Johnny Chan and other big stars. He was now a very successful cash game player, but soon his life would change for ever. In March 2001 he took the trip to San Jose to play in the $1000 Main Event at the Bay101 Casino. It was a 150 player field and our Spanish friend did very well. He came to the final table and there he faced off with the 1998 World Series of Poker champion, Scotty Nguyen. Little did they know then that the Spaniard would follow in the footsteps of Nguyen. Maybe it was a sign of what to come when Mortensen knocked out Scotty in 4th place and went on to win the tournament that paid $44.000, including a seat to the Main Event of the World Series of Poker later that year. Carlos took his wife Cecilia along with him to Las Vegas and he played the Main Event at the series. And the story was of course that he came to the final table as the chip leader. The job was far from done, because what stood in the way of Mortensen and the gold bracelet was by many to be considered to be the best final table in the Main Event's history. The final table included among others Phil Gordon, Mike Matusow, Phil Hellmuth and Dewey Tomko. It was not the talkative Phil Hellmuth that was Mortensen's biggest rival at the final table, it was the even more talkative Mike Matusow: – Matusow was playing really strong towards the end of that tournament. In my opinion it would be a battle between him and myself for the title.

But in the end it was Dewey Tomko and Carlos that had to battle it out man to man for the title. Going into the last hand, Carlos had Tomko dominated with a 3–1 chip lead. – He raised from the button to 200,000 on the blinds that were 15k–30k, I looked down on KQ in clubs. That is a good hand heads-up and I just called the raise. The flop hit me as good as it gets with J–10–3 with two of my suit.

This gave Carlos an open-end straight and flush draw with two overcards to boot. – I bet out 100,000 and he raised me to 400,000 total, before I pushed all in. That covered his 1.3 million chips. Dewey Tomko had no problems in calling with his two aces.

Carlos was now a coin flip away from being the world champion of poker, but the turn card was a blank and that meant Carlos had to sweat yet another card. The river landed a 9 that gave him a straight and Carlos could then shake his opponent's hand before embracing his wife and screaming out a big YES. He had just won the biggest prize money in poker history at the time with the first prize of 1.5 million dollars. After winning this much money, Carlos felt that going after the big bucks in the cash games was no longer necessary. He took a break from poker for six months and spent the time travelling the world with his wife and living in nice hotels, enjoying good food and nice weather. He was settled in all ways and it was time to enjoy life. But the Juan Carlos Mortensen story does not end here, of course. When he got back to the poker scene, he focused more on tournaments than cash games and his next big win would come two years after his triumph at the WSOP. He won another gold bracelet after beating a 143-strong player field and pocketed $250,000 in the process. He also made three other WSOP cashes in that time period. After that summer, the season two of the World Poker Tour started and Mortensen won $70.000 when he finished 4th in one of the WPTs that year. But this was nothing compared to the next season of the show when Mortensen went all the way to the top again and pocketed yet another million dollars for winning the Fiesta al Lago tournament in Las Vegas. He then went into a very exclusive group of players that had won both the Main Event at the World Series and a World Poker Tour tournament, he joined Doyle Brunson as the only other member of the club.

Tournament-wise the next couple of years were not that successful for Mortensen, he did pick up around $330,000 in prize money the next 20 months after his WPT win, but these were not the kind of results he was hoping for. But at last year's World Series of Poker he showed the world that he was still a force to be reckoned with in tournament poker. He picked up two final tables in the first two events he played. Later he busted out on the final table bubble in a $1000 NL tournament that drew a 2890 player field. He made another final table too, in the Razz event, where he almost went all the way, but lost heads-up. He had now picked up almost as much money at the World Series as he had did in the last 20 months. That meant that Carlos Mortensen was back. And yet another year passed and he then proved himself again as you all know at the WPT Championships.

So there it is, the summary of Carlos Mortensen's great results at the poker table. He sure has proved himself worthy of his new nickname «The Giant».