Fresh off of signing a deal with DeepStacks Poker Tour to become the official statistics provider for the 2014 DeepStacks Poker Tour Player of the Year race, the Global Poker Index announced another new signing, this time with a former tennis ace no stranger to the world of poker: Boris Becker.
As part of Becker’s responsibilities as, essentially, an ambassador for the GPI, the six-time Grand Slam champion will be tasked to promote poker, as well as GPI’s ranking system into mainstream consciousness. It’s no coincidence that the GPI would tap Becker for this role in an attempt to gain more traction among regular folks. Notwithstanding all his accomplishments in tennis, dear old Boris is also quite the poker player, earning his stripes on the felt to become one of the best celebrity/athlete poker players in the world. The current world number one in tennis, Rafael Nadal, might have an augment to his name, but there’s no denying Becker’s aptitude in the game. That much we can tell you.
For his part, Becker seems to have found a calling playing poker now that his tennis career has long since passed. But even with the years out of competitive tennis, the German nevertheless sees similarities between the sport he once dominated and the one he’s becoming better and better at. “Players are required to make good decisions at the most opportune times in each game,” he said before emphasizing on the importance tennis rankings had in his career and his objective to use the GPI’s system to pretty much “do the same for poker and poker players.”
As far as the GPI goes, the company couldn’t have picked a better sports ambassador for the job, especially when you take into account the fact that Becker actually plays a lot of competitive poker these days.
“Boris is one the most recognized athletes in the world and has been involved in poker for a few years now,” GPI CEO Alexandre Dreyfus said.
“The fact that he is ready and willing to work with us in growing the game and promoting the players makes me very proud to have our organization associated with such a legend.”
In addition to his new role, Becker will also have some sort of a ceremonial role within the company as the Honorary President of the 2014 Global Poker Index European Poker Awards. The awards presentation is still 10 months away, but its nice to know that one of our all-time favorite tennis players will have a significant role in it, even if it sounds more like a novelty than anything else.
