The Ross Poker Tour enters its 12th season. Every year, I am still surprised how long this thing has been going. It is all thanks to the players who keep bringing in friends and family as well as hosting us all in your home every month.
For the first tournament of the 2016 season, Rob Herd came through in the clutch and was able to host all 24 of us at his beautiful home in Severna Park. Thanks to Rob and his lovely wife for being so accommodating.
Usually in January, we see some new players that join the tour… but not this year. Instead, we saw the return of a player that has not played since 2011. Welcome back Jerry Hehring AKA Wilenski’s son-in-law. Jerry is one of the original members as he played in the 2005 inaugural campaign. Jerry has 10 RPT tourneys under his belt and has quite a few career records for top quality play. I was happy to see him as we need to bring some of those records down a bit…
We also saw the return of Drew Frank. Drew lives less than 2 miles from Rob Herd. Drew’s last tournament was August of 2014.
Our Beer Bitch was 6 beer Doug Deleo. I say 6 beers because it was pretty clear that the “horsemen” had hit the Park Inn pretty hard and Doug was feeling some of the effects. This is only Doug’s 2nd Beer Bitch finish in his 39 tournaments. His last Beer Bitch finish was May of last year.
Our RPT finishers start with Jason Trueman in 4th place. This is an excellent start to the year for Trueman. His last RPT finish was his last tournament: his epic victory at a 32 person tournament in October.
3rd place is Stan Lynch. Stan is becoming quite a consistent player after making the final table last year and only playing in 8 tournaments. He starts the 2016 campaign with a solid finish. This is Stan’s first top-3 finish since June of last year.
In 2nd place is the ghost of Jerry Hehring. Jerry has an impressive string of poker finishes: he has finished in the top 3 in 4 of his last 5 RPT tournaments. That is something to be proud of. Now here is the sobering fact: Jerry has never won an RPT event. Always a bridesmaid; never a bride… Congratulations to Jerry and we hope to see him more this year.
Our winner is Bob Herd Sr. This is Bob’s first RPT victory ever in his 23rd event. Bob’s last top 3 finish was in October of last year. Congratulations to Bob on this great honor on being the 55th person ever to win an RPT event.