Photos: Rafael Nadal has a horrible poker face

Rafael Nadal could not outwit No. 1 female poker player Vanessa Selbst. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images) For the last two years, Rafael Nadal has been honing

Courtney Nguyen | Apr 15, 2014

Photos: Rafael Nadal has a horrible poker face /

Rafael Nadal could not outwit No. 1 female poker player Vanessa Selbst. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

For the last two years, Rafael Nadal has been honing his poker game as an ambassador for PokerStars -- one of the stranger sponsorship pairings in tennis -- and he even won an exhibition tournament in Prague last December.

But Nadal was no match in a heads-up game against the world-No. 1 female poker player Vanessa Selbst in Monte Carlo last week. It's all for a good cause though, as 5,000 Euros were donated to charity for the event.

Nadal playing poker is always an amusing thought given how demonstrative and fired up he gets on the tennis court. Put it this way: What in the world does Rafael Nadal's poker face look like?

Well it looks like this:

Eyebrow? Check. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

Sheepish grin? Check. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

Surreptitiously getting advice from his courtside coach? Check. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

So close. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

Keep working on it, Rafa. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights from the event below:

Published Apr 15, 2014

COURTNEY NGUYEN

Contributor, SI.com Nguyen is a freelance writer for SI.com, providing full coverage of professional tennis both on and off the court. Her content has become a must-read for fans and insiders to stay up-to-date with a sport that rarely rests. She has appeared on radio and TV talk shows all over the world and is one of the co-hosts of No Challenges Remaining, a weekly podcast available on iTunes. Nguyen graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 1999 and received a law degree from the University of California, Davis in 2002. She lives in the Bay Area.