Eighty-two tournaments came and went before Jeff Ferguson won one. That is the longest wait to a first win in the history of this league, and it is not close.

September 5th, 2025. Eight Deuce #49, fifteen runners. Five knockouts, five hours and nineteen minutes, and $455 in prize money for first. Ten years of Friday nights answered in a single evening.

What makes it remarkable is that he had been close the entire time. Jeff has 11 runner-up finishes, tied for third-most in league history — three in Canterberry, four in Eight Deuce, two in the World Series of Parker, one at the Tournament of Champions, and one at the 2022 Annual, where second place paid $595, still the biggest single payday of his career. He kept reaching the last table. The last hand kept going the other way.

The heads-up record is brutal reading: twelve appearances, one win. Eleven times he has been one hand from a tournament and lost it. Nobody in this league has been made to wait like that.

He has 92 events, 19 cashes, 68 knockouts and $4,050 in career prize money. And he is still turning up at the end of them — in August 2026 at #58 he was heads-up again, runner-up to Warren Mervin.

Some players make it look easy. Jeff waited through eighty-two of them, won the eighty-third, and is still turning up. That is its own kind of achievement.