Football legend Ronaldo Nazário de Lima, dubbed by sports fans “The Phenomenon”, is currently in the territory, not to take to the pitch but to instead hit the felt of the PokerStars 2015 Asia Championship of Poker (ACOP), taking place until November 13 at PokerStars Live Macau in the City of Dreams casino.
“It is a great pleasure to be here as it is my first time in Macau and my second big tournament. I’m very excited to begin playing and to give my best performance,” the Brazillian expressed.
This is Ronaldo’s second tournament as PokerStars Brand Ambassador, after having played in the PokerStarts Caribbean Adventure (PCA) at the beginning of this year. He finished 26th overall, a rank that he hopes to improve upon now.
“I started playing poker back in 2000 when I got my first knee injury in Inter Milan, from there I kept playing with other team mates in the hotels before the games. It was there that my passion for this game started,” he said.
Ronaldo has been playing with PokerStars for the last 3 years and says he has been happy to do so. “Poker gave me a new challenge in life, a way of returning to competition and its emotions in a different way,” he commented.
The former star, who retired from football in 2011 and is considered one of the greatest football players of all time, says that poker is a great mind game from which players can take a lot of information and skills that they can use in their daily life. He thinks that it is time to see poker as a “mind sport” and not like the “old times when it had a dark connotation with the game being played underground, in closed places, and by heavy smokers and heavy drinkers”.
Answering the press’ question about which game he plays better, Ronaldo had no doubt: “I was a much better football player than I am a poker player,” but he highlighted the fact that he is now “too old to play football but still very young playing poker so that might also explain it”.
In the little time spent in the city so far, the former football player found “the road and street signage in Portuguese” interesting but noted it was “weird to find out that there are not many that can actually speak the language.”
The tournament’s main event that kicked off yesterday will continue for two days with a HKD100,000 buy-in on both days which features a HKD15 million prize pool guarantee. November 13 will be reserved for the Super High Roller event. Renato Marques
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