EPT heads to Barcelona, WPT stays on Bicycle, Liddell and Northcott engaged

ept-barcelona-wpt-bicycle-chuck-liddellThe European Poker Tour is once again set to invade Spain. The action kicks off at the Casino de Barcelona on Nov. 21, with the €5k buy-in main event getting underway on the 22nd and continuing until the 27th. Last year’s event saw 478 players sign up, creating a prize pool of €3.382m, of which €850k was claimed by winner Carter Phillips. For those keeping track of such things, the current frontrunner for EPT Player of the Year is Brazil’s Fernando Brito, with the UK’s Toby Lewis and Italy’s Dario Alioto in hot pursuit.

Stateside, the World Poker Tour has re-upped with the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California. The five-year extension means the Legends Of Poker event will remain on the WPT calendar each August until at least 2015. The relationship between the two parties dates back to 2002, and it’s always nice to see a couple sticking together because they actually get along, and not just because the stupid brats haven’t yet grown up and gone off to college.

Speaking of charming couples, Heidi Northcott and mixed martial arts legend Chuck ‘Iceman’ Liddell have announced their engagement. The duo, who have been an item for over a year, sealed the deal during a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon on Nov. 4. No word on whether they were naked at the time. It’s the first marriage for either party. By the way, we’re including this here because Chuck appeared on Calvin Ayre Wild Card Poker back in the day and because Heidi once won $500 for placing 18th at Larry Flynt’s Challenge Cup in 2008, which apparently qualifies her as a ‘poker pro’. In that light, we’re going to amend our own résumé from McDonald’s ‘burger flipper’ to ‘chef’.