$25K Fantasy Poker: Lind Puts Team Lindgren in Lead

With 11 events concluded at this year’s WSOP, a couple of teams are starting to pull ahead of the pack in this year’s $25,000 WSOP WSOP Fantasy Poker League.

We had an in-depth article about the $25K Fantasy league in our news section yesterday, but here’s a quick summary:

Fifteen teams of professional poker players have pooled together and formed a WSOP Fantasy Poker League with a $25,000 buy-in.

Each team was then given $200 to bid on nominated players. The order in which teams nominated players was then randomly selected and the bidding process began.

Each team had to fill a roster of eight players and could not exceed their budget of $200.

The most expensive player in the draft was Phil Ivey, costing Barry Greenstein $108.

As we all know he will not be playing in this year’s WSOP. Which is a bad, bad, beat for Barry Greenstein.

There were another couple of expensive players in the draft.

Here are the top 10:

Phil Ivey – $108 – Team Greenstein
Daniel Negreanu – $89 – Team Kassela/Deeb
Daniel Alaei – $80 – Team Mizrachi/Bleznick
Jason Mercier – $74 – Team Negreanu
Scott Seiver – $74 – Team Negreanu
Eugene Katchalov – $72 – Team Katchalov/Alaei
Barry Greenstein – $64 – Team Greenstein
Justin Smith – $64 – Team Smith/Griffin
Nick Schulman – $64 – Team Bord/Lewis
Shawn Buchanan – $63 – Team Lindgren

According to the analysis at www.25kfantasy.com, these players have yet to pay off on their investment.

The players who’ve provided the biggest return per point spent are those who went for $1.

Kirill Gerasimov, Jason Sommerville and Jimmy Fricke all sold for $1 and have earned 14 points. They’ve earned their teams a solid ROI of 13, a number that can only go up.

The top 5 scoring players so far are:

Steve Billirakis – 98 points – Team Negreanu
George Lind – 94 points – Team Lindgren
Jon Turner – 81 points – Team Bonomo/Froehlich/Seiver
Eric Froehlich – 77 points – Team Lindgren
Richard Ashby – 74 points – Team Bord/Lewis

Both Billirakis and Lind scored massive points today when they finished 3rd and 2nd, respectively, in today’s $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo Championship. Points are doubled in events with buy-ins of $10,000 or more.

For more information on the scoring system click here.

All right, enough with ROI and top scoring players, let’s see what teams are leading this high-roller fantasy league.

As of today, the top 5 teams are:

Team Lindgren – 185 points
Team Katchalov/Alaei – 134 points
Team Negreanu – 125 points
Team Bord/Lewis – 122 points
Team Bonomo/Froehlich/Seiver – 92 points

Team Lindgren shot into the lead today after Lind’s runner-up finish, he accounts for more than half the teams points. Team Negreanu also saw a huge boost today, 84 of his points came from Billirakis’ finish today.

The bottom 5 teams as of today are:

Team Katz – 29 points
Team Greenstein – 17 points
Team Kassela/Deeb – 3 points
Team Brunson – 2 points
Team Shchemelev – 1 point

Team Shchemelev’s only point comes from Sergey Rybachenko’s 34th finish place in $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em. Team Brunson owes their points to Freddy Deeb’s cash in the $10K Omaha Hi-Lo and Team Greenstein owes none of its points to Phil Ivey.

There’s a total prizepool of $375,000 with the following payout structure.

First – $225,000
Second – $93,750
Third – $37,500
Fourth – $18,750

With only 11 events concluded in this year’s WSOP, anything can happen. Today’s $10K Omaha Hi-Lo propelled two teams into the top five and five other tournaments are currently underway.

We’ll have to wait and see what the other 47 events will bring.