After a little over a year of getting the best poker education from some of the finest poker players in the world, tennis star and PokerStars ambassador Rafael Nadal is set to enter his first live poker tournament.
The news comes by way of Agence France-Presse, who said that the number one ranked tennis player in the world will make his long awaited live poker debut in a charity tournament in Prague on December 12.
The tournament, which will be part of the schedule of the European Poker Tour stop in the city, will feature Rafa go up against with a steady diet of international professional poker players and other sports celebrities, the names of which will be announced in the next few weeks.
Not one to back down from a challenge, Nadal is ready to put all the skills he learned after more than a year of being under the tutelage of professionals. “I have been playing poker online for almost 18 months and now I`m looking forward to the challenge of playing my first live tournament,” Nadal said in a statement, as quoted by the AFP.
“It’s no secret that I love the competition and that’s what I like about poker,” the tennis player adds. “It’s a game of skill that requires mental strength and the ability to out-think your opponents and in that way there are similarities to tennis.”
Like everybody else that has kept tabs on Rafa’s rise up the poker ranks, we’re all looking forward to see how he does in a live poker setting. Judging by how he has fared on the tennis courts his entire career, we won’t be surprised if he feels right at home on the poker felt.
