Fatima Moreira De Melo won gold at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 with the Dutch hockey side before retiring to become a poker professional.
The gold was won of three Olympic medals De Melo won during a stellar hockey career in which she was capped hundreds of times for her national side.
But it’s not the only sport she knows well. Partner Raemon Sluiter was a former top 50 tennis player and is now a coach for world No 30 Kiki Mertens.
Fatima believes there are plenty of transferable skills between sport and poker – and Nadal may well have them all.
The PokerStars pro exclusively told Express Sport: “The more decision-making you have to make in a sport, the more similar it is to poker.
“My boyfriend was a pro tennis player, a coach now. I love tennis as well and because of my poker game, I play tennis way more strategically and analytically.
“It’s like Nadal. He doesn’t hit a winner in the first shot he gets. He builds up the point then hits the shot he knows he’ll make and the other person can’t attack. When he gets the chance, he goes all-in.
“In tennis, when you’re hitting your forehand it’s like ‘do I run up to the net or not? Does this ball have enough top spin for me to go after it?’
“I used to be an athlete and there are similarities, the fact you have to focus, the fact you can train to become better, which is the same for anything in life.
“I played twice, for 35 minutes, and I had team-mates to cover my back. Now I’m an individual athlete who sits in a chair for 10 hours.”
Nadal used to work as a PokerStars ambassador and Fatima has come up against the 16-time Grand Slam champion on the poker table already.
On his playing style, she said: “I could tell he was very disciplined like he is in his sport and it was quite transferable to poker.
“He was tight aggressive, very composed and didn’t let anyone have information. He was very controlled – although he wasn’t doing his water bottle thing!”
Fatima stopped short of calling poker a sport, instead opting to describe it as a ‘mind game’. Although she says there are striking resemblances between top sportsmen and top poker players.
She explained: “The quality of resilience is something you need in poker and as a pro athlete.
My hockey has helped. I think the fact I know if I train I can become successful at something gives me confidence.
“The fact I know things are trainable and that I can concentrate on things helps me in poker.
“And I know it’s never always going to be. I love the game and I used to love hockey but I know sometimes it can be tough.”