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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|
Photos: Rafael Nadal has a horrible poker face
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.

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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:

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Courtney Nguyen
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.

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