By now you should know that there’s a $10K live poker package up for grabs in our completely free Fantasy Freeroll.
We’ve got a package to give away, you want it (who wouldn’t?), but what exactly does it take to win it? As you’ll see on the Fantasy Freeroll page, you need to pick 8 real-world poker players and you’ll score points relative to their performance at the World Series of Poker.
But what’s the key to picking the right team?
While we can’t predict what will happen at the 2025 WSOP, we can take a look at last year’s results and see what worked and what didn’t, which players ran hot and who was left out in the cold.
This is the first year of the PokerOrg Fantasy Freeroll, but points will be allocated according to ODB’s annual WSOP fantasy draft. So, let’s rewind to the 2024 World Series and check the numbers to see where the smart money was last year.
Top value players
Each player drafted comes with a cost, and with a budget of just $200 to work with it’s crucial to get the maximum value for your spend.
By dividing the total points scored by a player’s cost it’s possible to identify those who generated the best value in the draft. It’s interesting to note that, of the 152 players included in the 2024 draft, 9 out of the top 10 best-value players cost just $1.
These were Dong Chen (pictured above, 217 points per $1), Robert Mizrachi (212/$), Ari Engel (206/$), Ash Gupta (168/$), Maksim Pisarenko (141/$), Christian Harder (128/$), Sergio Aido (118/$), Dzmitry Urbanovich (93/$) and Punnat Punsri (89/$).
The only player in the top 10 best-value players to go for more than $1 was Calvin Anderson (below) at $3. Anderson ended up with the 4th highest points total in the league (283 points), making him an incredible addition to any team. Anderson enjoyed 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishes during the series, all in $10K events which offer double points.
Dong Chen’s huge return on investment did not involve any bracelet wins, and in fact resulted from just seven cashes in the series — all for buy-ins of $5K or under. However, he did make two final tables and also ran well in some big-field events, and as you can see in our scoring guide, the more players in the event, the bigger the field bonus. His single best points return came in the Mystery Millions event (101 points), where he finished 59/18,409.
Then you have a player like Ari Engel, who didn’t manage a final table but did finish in the money in 15 events. These included the Colossus, with over 19,000 players, where his 68th place finish brought him his highest fantasy score of the series (101 points).
So, to find the best value for your team you can look for a) players with cheap prices, b) those you expect to do well in big buy-in events, including the Main Event, and c) those with the ability to run deep in tournaments with very large fields.
Best performing players
Looking at the players who scored the most points across the series, the top 10 accumulated between 237 points (Chris Hunichen, 10th) and 388 points (Jeremy Ausmus, 1st). Obviously, scoring the most points is how you win the league, but what did the return on investment look like on these high scorers?
Ausmus, a member of the PokerOrg Player Advisory Board, enjoyed an incredible series with 16 live cashes, including 7 final tables. He played a big schedule, and cashed in big-field events such as the Mystery Millions and Monster Stack, as well as big buy-in events like the $250K Super High Roller, the $50K Poker Players Championship, the $50K High Roller and the $100K High Roller.
He had all the ingredients necessary to score very highly, and he did, but the market expected it: Ausmus’ price was $81, the 6th highest cost for any player in the draft and over 40% of an entire team budget. While he scored more points than anyone, his points per $ ratio was a fairly average 4.79/$.
The next highest scorer across the entire league was John Racener, who finished 2nd with 336 points, only 2 points ahead of WSOP Player of the Year Scott Seiver (below).
Both Racener and Seiver went for similar prices of $36 and $37, respectively, an above average cost but not to the degree that it hampers the rest of the team in the way that drafting a very high-cost player such as Ausmus might. Buying Seiver and Racener last summer cost $73, less than Ausmus, but brought a huge return of 670 points. Both players’ value scores were around the 9/$ mark.
It’s crucial to score big points to win the league, but be wary of relying on very high value players as it will leave you with less budget to fill out the rest of your team. It could also backfire if that player happens to have a low-scoring series.
Speaking of which…
Underperforming players
There are players who have everything required to score huge points — the skills, the schedule, the appetite for big-field and big-money tournaments — but fall short.
As they say, that’s poker. Even the best players run bad, and a look at last year’s fantasy draft numbers highlight a number of players who carried big price tags but didn’t deliver the points many expected of them. And, as we’ll see, even winning a high-profile bracelet doesn’t necessarily translate to scoring a lot of points.
Looking at the most expensive players from last year, top of the list is Daniel Negreanu (below) at $132. Despite playing a packed schedule, including a win in the $50K Poker Players Championship (PPC), Negreanu ended up as the 26th ranked player in terms of points won. His highest score of 100 points, for the PPC win, is less than Dong Chen received for finishing 59/18,409 in the Mystery Millions. As a result, Negreanu’s value score for last summer’s WSOP sits at just 1.27/$.
It is worth remembering that this year there will be a 25-point bonus for any bracelet win, though.
The second most expensive player in the 2024 draft at $110 was Alex Livingston, who also managed a bracelet win in the $3K PLO event, but it was worth only 58 points. He brought in 106 points for any team he featured in, but his value score of 0.96/$ suggests that budget could perhaps have been put to better use.
Of the top 10 most expensive players, ranging from Negreanu (1st, $132) to Koray Aldemir (10th, $75), only Jeremy Ausmus (6th, $81) has a value score over 2.6/$.
Investing a large chunk of your budget in an expensive player can result in plenty of points, but as with everything in this fascinating game, you’ll need to balance out the risk versus the reward.
Finally, it’s a good idea, if you can, to get an idea for the type of schedule a player is going to take on. Take the example of Darren Elias, who cashed in 9 WSOP events during the summer of 2024. His cost of $2 suggests that could have been a sound investment, but for the fact that every event he cashed in was an online bracelet event, which don’t count towards the fantasy draft points. As a result, Elias ended up with zero points and a value score of 0/$.
It’s important to learn as much as you can about the players you’re drafting, but also where the most points can be scored.
In this way you can give yourself the best chance of scoring big and — with a $10K live event package up for grabs — winning big.
Register your interest NOW on our Fantasy Freeroll page, and get some more tips from Terrance 'TJ' Reid in his guide to crushing the fantasy leagues this summer.
