The June 2015 RPT tournament found itself in the wonderfully blue collar suburb of Essex. Yours truly hosted the event and we ended up with 28 bodies which was the maximum capacity for my little place… Good to see such a large tournament in the middle of the summer.
This tournament brought some new faces to the RPT. Uncle Pat Ruby made his debut. Uncle Pat is just another one of the Ruby’s to join our mix after having both Chet the Elder and Chet the Younger playing for the last few months.
We also had Dave Lucius who is a longtime family friend of the Ross’s and lives in Boston. He was in town for the weekend and what better way to relax then to play some cards with a bunch of good folks.
We also had the return of some old faces. The first one is Tommy Ross Jr. Tommy was one of the original RPT members but life caught up with him and it was difficult to make the monthly trip to play some cards. This was Tommy’s first RPT event since July of 2012… so it has been almost 3 years since he last played. Good to see him back in the action.
Another old face was Gene O’Connor and his son Paul. Gene used to be a regular until he moved down to Florida but now he plays whenever he is town. This is his first tournament since September 2013. Paul used to play WAY back in the day… This is his first tournament since October of 2007. Now that is quite the return. Good to have them back playing as well.
Every month I take a little bit of pride talking about the latest RPT Beer Bitch… however, this month it could not have happened to a more unlikely candidate: Me. In my own house no less. I played my hands pretty well I thought but the poker gods were not with me tonight… Ah well. This is my 3rd beer bitch finish and my first since September of 2013… The only other one was June of 2005. It is very disappointing to get out so early in a larger tournament… I am sure this will hurt at the end of the year as I already missed 2 tournaments and have a Beer Bitch finish that will be included in my results. Guess I will have to man up the rest of the year.
Now, I usually talk about cool hands that happened during play… but I was not in the tournament so I was pouting and serving drinks to people… So I will just cut to the results.
Uncle Pat Ruby finished in 5th place. This is an excellent start for his first tournament. Looking forward to seeing him at the table in the future.
Doug Deleo finished in 4th place. This was Doug’s 2nd RPU finish of the year since he won the February tournament. Congrats to Doug.
Stan Lynch finished in 3rd place. This is Stan’s first ever Top-3 finish and it came in only his third tournament. Congrats to Stan.
Second place went to Paul O’Connor. In his first tournament in roughly 8 years, Paul comes in second and gets his first ever RPT Top-3 finish in his 5th tournament ever. Congrats to Paul.
The Winner of the June RPT Tournament is Matt Straffin. Matt won last month’s tournament so this makes it back-to-back victories for him. This is quite the feat and has only been done a few times in RPT history:
Charles Harris Jr.: May and June of 2006
John Wilenski: June and July of 2009
Tony Huckestein: June and July of 2012
This is illustrious company to be in as each of the above players have won a RPT Player of the Year award. This finish moved Matt up to 7th place in the RPT standings. Congrats to Matt on this rare accomplishment.
Next month will probably be at FedEx’s Distribution Hub. Invite pending. See everyone there.