Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 58 (M)
Posts: 2432
He might not be as handy at the felt as he is on the court, but Rafa Nadal is certainly enjoying his association with PokerStars at the moment.
Having joined their ranks in recent months, the Spanish tennis star has been busy brushing up his on his poker skills as well as shooting a new advert for the company.
In an effort to promote PokerStars mobile app, Rafa is filmed walking down the street whilst pursued by thousands of eager spectators. Sweating his every move, the crowd finally erupts when he moves all-in.
When asked about his acting skills, Rafa commented:
"I’m still quite new to playing poker and am focused on becoming a better player, so I really didn’t need to act very hard when shooting these scenes."
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
He's not that bad, although he's used to always do tennis related advertisings. Although he says he is a beginner at this level, he's better than some football players that pass their lives filling our email boxes and which appear in every online newspapers on the side bars. Some of them, when they start talking, already gives the will not to buy any product he's talking about!
Joined: Mar '12
Location: Austria
Age: 30 (M)
Posts: 36
if Poker hires Wayne Rooney everybody will think that we sit in front of our computers with hair problems and big pimples and 888sWebcamPoker would hv to shut down all its webcams coz its fkin true
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
It was clear that after Pokerstars decided to hire Rafa to promote their site there will be some sort of promo vids with him...
Only time will tell if stars did a good move, the only valid thing will be f they have a traffic increase or not. I like that Rafa admitted from beginning that he is a noob on poker but perhaps their image strategy was based on it too.
Interesting, havent seen the commercial yet, wonder if pokerstars is making a good Choice adding him to the team, he says he's a noob but who knows could just be Portraying that to catch people off guard
Joined: Dec '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 38 (M)
Posts: 707
hi its good to bring some new faces into poker..what i think they should do though is to pick some minion like us who actually play poker and give us the chance to try and make it big with free advertising and backing etc.. they go for famous people who dont have a clue about poker..
the people who keep them in business..have a big game and winner gets some sponsorship deal sounds brilliant idea to me.
Joined: Nov '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 67 (M)
Posts: 3361
i think nadal might be playing a lot more poker in the future if he doesn't get his injuries sorted out. which would be a shame as he is a fantastic tennis player.
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
whatever nadal say to me seems like he doesn't believe the words that come out of his mouth...it's just business from nadal's point of view- doubt he even likes poker, maybe had a go just for fun, but he has really intense schedule when fit for tennis, and even when he isn't fit there are lots of duties with the sponsors...
Joined: Mar '12
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1277
Posted by pochui: whatever nadal say to me seems like he doesn't believe the words that come out of his mouth...it's just business from nadal's point of view- doubt he even likes poker, maybe had a go just for fun, but he has really intense schedule when fit for tennis, and even when he isn't fit there are lots of duties with the sponsors...
Yeah, there's no way in hell he's got enough free time when he's fully fit to play any serious amount of poker, enough to get him to a good skill level. And if he's injured then he'll be in rehabillitation, not sat at a PC learning how to get sucked out on, on the river by the UTG lol. Not saying he won't be any good just seems like a very businessy deal for him and PS - and when you consider that Spains economy is wretched right now, it definitely seems like an attempt to get Spain's unemployed on their poker site.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
Age: 40 (M)
Posts: 6483
Posted by noonlion: Funny, Nadal gets involved with poker and his tennis career goes into decline lol.
Federer and Djokovic have performed far better over the last couple years and Nadal seems to have lost a little of his grit and raw awesomeness.
Hope he makes a good comeback from injury cos he's one of those sportsmen who just can't help but have people like him on and off the court.
I was never a big Nadal fan and was sad when he finally out-seeded Federer.
(Tennis) players like Nadal never last too long as no#1 seed: those brute-force / bulky types simply don't have the 'endurance'. Look at all the no#1 seeds over the years that have lasted at the top for long stints, they're never the big buff guys like Nadal, guys like him get injuries, burn-out, etc.