2013 EPT Prague Poker Festival To Feature Nadal, Ronaldo And Negreanu

The European Poker Tour Prague poker festival will take place at the Hilton Prague Hotel between December 8th and 18th, and included amongst its nearly 40 tournament schedule is a €100,000 charity poker event featuring some of the world’s top sports personalities.
The celebrity event will actually get underway on December 12th, when poker fans can look forward to watching a stellar line-up of stars competing across the baize, including the likes of tennis number one Rafa Nadal, Brazilian footballing legend Ronaldo, as well as former Ukrainian football star Andriy Shevchenko, Italian skier Alberto Tomba, and Dutch Olympic hockey gold medalist Fatima Moreira de Melo. In addition, the sport figures will also get to compete against a poker superstar in the guise of 6-times WSOP bracelet winner Daniel Negreanu.
Not surprisingly, the sport stars are already gearing up to win bragging rights over their competitors, and commenting on his upcoming appearance at the charity event, Nadal said: “Ronaldo has always been a hero of mine and I’m looking forward to taking him on at the poker table. The great thing about poker is that it’s a common ground for us to compete on, and there are many similarities between sport and poker strategy, so it will be good to see how he translates his game from the football field to the poker felt.”
Despite having gained some experience playing online, however, Nadal has yet to compete at a live poker tournament, whereas Ronaldo has already previously played at the Brazil Series of Poker and at the EPT Barcelona. All the same, seeing two of the greatest sporting stars in the world battling against each other in Prague should be immensely entertaining, and as Ronaldo, noted: ”
“This is going to be a great event, and it’s one of the few opportunities that I have to take on Rafa and the other athletes on a level playing field. We are all sports professionals, but in completely different fields, and poker is the level ground on which we can all compete fairly.”
The charity tournament will be just one of the many highlight expected from the EPT Prague festival, which will culminate in the prestigious €5,300 Main Event, won last year by Sweden’s Ramzi Jelassi for €835,000 ($1,091,418).