PokerStars Invites Players to Play Against Rafa Nadal on Play Money Facebook

PokerStars SportsStar Rafa Nadal will be playing for an hour on PokerStars’ play-money Facebook app on Wednesday, March 19.

The game will be a “low stakes” 6-max NL Zoom play money game, meaning that everyone can join the pool and have the opportunity to play against the Tennis champion.

A live webcast of the event will be broadcast on PokerStars.TV, showing a split screen: On one side, players can watch Rafa live as he moves around the Zoom tables; on the other side Daniel Negreanu will be at Rafa’s side offering live commentary and asking viewer questions to Rafa as he plays.

The live stream will also be accessible through the Facebook app itself, and on Youtube.

Though the game is for play money only, a challenge aspect of the game has been added to “Rafa vs the World,” with a running tally of hands won or lost by Rafa on display. PokerStars will make a donation to Care International on behalf of the winning side.

It is the second time PokerStars has run such a promotion: in January it ran something similar on PokerStars Spain, its Spanish-regulated site. That event was on a real money Zoom table—albeit only at NL2—and €3000 was donated on behalf of Nadal, who succeeded in winning more hands than he lost during the hour.

In total 1000 players sat at the Zoom game to play against Nadal, and 10,000 watched the livestream.

PokerStars launched its Facebook App in early 2013, a fully-featured and polished social app that competes directly with Zynga Poker. It includes missions and achievements, virtual items and coins, play money chips purchase, and a full slate of game types options.

The game is promoted primarily on the Facebook platform. However, because the Facebook player pool is shared with the dot-com website, players will also be able to get take part in the event through their download clients too.