X Marks the Spot

Looking ahead here a bit as I’ll be doing a bit of traveling once again soon, heading back to Barcelona for the start of season 12 of the European Poker Tour. It’s another mammoth series they have planned -- 71 events altogether, counting the satellites, all playing out in the span of just two weeks.

Had a chance two years ago to go to Barcelona, which became an even more memorable trip as I was able to bring Vera along, too. Looking forward to the return.

Stephen Bartley has come up with an inventive post over on the PokerStars blog this week spelling out “The A to Z of EPT Barcelona” in which he’s found something to say about the tour’s history there for each letter of the alphabet -- except for “X,” that is.

What could he have done for “X”? I suppose there was Season X two years ago when I was there, although the EPT doesn’t really go for roman numerals.

Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu had a cameo in the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Negreanu finished runner-up in the 10,300 High Roller at Barcelona two years ago to the Austrian Thomas Meuhloecker.

Stephen went with “Youth” for the letter “Y,” pointing out how nine of the 11 EPT Barcelona Main Event winners have been in their 20s. I guess that group postdates Generation X, for whom the cutoff seems to be having a birthdate in the early 1980s. Might have been another way to bring Gen X in there, though.

The X Games have been held in Barcelona before. The increasing size of the fields and number of events at EPT Barcelona might have been connected to “X” as a symbol for multiplication, or to XL for extra large.

Or Stephen could’ve gone with X standing for the unknown, relating it to the problem of who will be the next EPT Main Event champion due to be solved later this month.