Carlos Mortensen Wins Third World Poker Tour Title

Published on March 25th, 2010 5:02 am EST

Carlos Mortensen won the Hollywood Poker Open on Wednesday evening, and is now one of only two players (the other being Gus Hansen) who have managed to win three World Poker Tour titles.

Thanks to his nearly $400,000 in first-place prize money in the event, "El Matador" now has more career WPT earnings than any other player. Mortensen now has around $5.7 million in lifetime WPT earnings, which is about $200k more than Daniel Negreanu.

In addition to his three WPT titles, Mortensen also has two World Series of Poker bracelets, one of which came in the 2001 WSOP main event.

In short - Carlos "El Matador" Mortensen continues to add to his already ridiculously impressive resume, and has to be considered one of the very best tournament players in the world today.

The final table of the Hollywood Poker Open was looking to be a short one after Mortensen eliminated Frank Calo in third place. Eliminating the first four players had only taken 67 hands, and it looked as though it might be a short night for the players.

However, the heads up battle between Mike Mustafa and Carlos Mortensen ended up taking hours to complete, as a total of 71 hands were needed to decide the winner.

The key hand of the heads up battle came in Hand #131, when Mortensen managed to double through Mustafa to take a commanding chip lead.

After a flop of 10d-9d-6s, Mortensen and Mustafa got all-in. They turned up:

Mortensen - 8h-7c
Mustafa - 10c-9h

Mustafa had flopped top two pair, while Mortensen had flopped the nut straight.

The board ran out Js-3d, giving Mortensen the massive pot. After this hand, Mustafa was left with just a couple of big blinds, and was eliminated in second place a short time later.

Here is how the final table finished out:

1. Carlos Mortensen, $393,820
2. Mike Mustafa, $223,623
3. Frank Calo, $167,717
4. Chris Bell, $124,966
5. Ravi Raghavan, $105,234
6. Jerry Payne, $88,791


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Filed Under: Tournament Results