If you were to tell us that Rafael Nadal had won a tennis match, then we would not be surprised at all. But as he waits to see whether the back injury that he sustained in the Australian Open final will allow him to travel to South America to take part in the ATP, the professional player has recently taken some time at home in Majorca to try some charity poker for his main sponsors PokerStars. While he may not be going all out on playing slots and blackjack at sites like the Slotsplus Casino online, playing online poker is quite a departure from what you would expect tennis players to be into – and it certainly came as a surprise to some when he was able to win a huge amount of the games.
He is rated as the number one tennis player in the world, but recently he took on the online poker community in Spain for €3000 per hand in the Zoom Poker contest which was held on the website. The rules stated that he had to play for one hour against all comers, and for every hand he won he would be given a point and €3000 donated to charity. If the opponent won, then the point would get to Spain, and those players who are online would get the chance to split each pot which was won. Perhaps even more impressive was the fact that as well is trying to play all of the games, Nadal was also distracted by engaging in online chats on Twitter and Facebook during the proceedings, and the event was also webcast so that players could get a look at his expressions and body language whilst still remaining anonymous themselves – something which gave them a huge advantage in terms of being able to spot his tells and read his bluffs.
But despite all of these obstacles which were stacked against him, Nadal stayed true to his nature and came up a winner. He managed to play seventy-five hands in sixty minutes, and one an astonishing two thirds of them. When it came to the end of the hour, Nadal had both taken on and defeated the Spanish players, which meant that the Good Hand Project charity (which supports young people who are searching for employment in the country at the moment, after it was hit by an economic crisis) benefited hugely. Now we know that if they should ever come a time when Nadal is injured before his prime is over, or when he retires at have to take up another hobby, he could still make a living as a fantastic poker professional who clearly knows what he is doing on the tables and how to defeat his opponent even when he has what seems to be a dramatic disadvantage on his site. It begs the question of how many real poker professionals could actually manage to pull off the same kind of feat?