Born Juan Carlos Mortensen, “El Matador” has come a long way since first learning to play poker in 1997 in his native country of Spain. Mortensen quickly gained the respect of the best poker players in Madrid, and in 1999, they offered to pay for his World Series of Poker buy-in and travel expenses for a percentage of his winnings. He did not cash, but parlayed $1,000 of his own money into $50,000 by playing limit hold’em cash games. Two years later, he won the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament, which awarded him cash and a seat in the 2001 WSOP main event. He won the WSOP championship that year and the $1.5 million that went along with it. His second WSOP bracelet came in 2003 in a $5,000 limit hold’em event. His next big first-place finish came in 2004 at the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship. In 2006, he made three WSOP final tables. Two were in no-limit hold’em events and one was in razz, where he finished in second place. In 2007, Mortensen made history when he won the $25,000 buy-in WPT Five-Star World Poker Championship. The season-ending main event generated the biggest prize pool in WPT history. He took nearly $4 million of the almost $15.5 million prize pool. He is a sponsored Full Tilt pro.