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Rafael Nadal is probably the world’s most power-packed tennis player. The baseline demon is known for his incredibly aggressive baseline game, in particular, and his refusal to ever accept defeat until it’s “game, set and match”.
But of course, the Majorcan doesn’t taste defeat all that often, particularly at his favourite Grand Slam surface of Roland Garros where he’s won a record-breaking eight French Opens and is pre-tournament favourite to make it nine wins in 2014.
“So what’s all this got to do with playing poker?” you may well be asking.
Well it seems the 29 year-old Spaniard may be thinking about competing in the future when his elbows and knees are no longer up to the task! Specifically, Senor Nadal is planning to ply his skills at the poker table. He has agreed to compete at online poker with the PokerStars site as he travels the world with the international tennis circuit.
Site members will be able to watch Rafa him compete whenever he’s online simply by searching for the user-name ‘Rafa Nadal’.
Now there are two basic ways to play poker and all other strategies are variants or mixes of these two. One is the percentage game; a steady strategy of making continual value calls, using one’s judgement steadily to good effect to make a profit – usually on a two steps forward, one step back type of basis.
The other approach is the all-in type of game beloved of the world’s high rollers. These players tend to win and lose spectacularly in fairly equal measure. These are the swashbuckling superstars of international poker and the kind of players you read about who have won, lost, then re-won millions. Whether they end up well on top, or all washed up depends on their last game, usually, because it’s an all or nothing approach.
Now if Rafa’s tennis is anything to go by, you would expect that his poker strategy will be a case of “all-in”. But it ain’t necessarily so of course – and there have been times when Nadal has had to play a little percentage tennis to triumph where the tennis pundits thought he couldn’t. Specifically, we’re talking here about what was probably the greatest match ever – the Wimbledon final of 2008.
Roger Federer was the undisputed Wimbledon boss having won five tournaments in a row and there were those who said Nadal couldn’t win here – particularly after he’d fought so bravely in the same final line-up the year before. But Nadal came out quickly, racing to a two set lead before Federer knew what hit him.
Then, incredibly, the Swiss won the next two sets both on tiebreaks – saving two Wimbledon championship points in the fourth set. The final set went with serve to seven all then Federer saved three break points but he was rocking and Rafa landed a knockout blow when Federer made a forehand error and Nadal served out to win.
If Nadal’s poker follows a similar path, we’re in for some heart-stopping moments – either way, it will be fun to watch how he approaches the task.
