The drafted frequency states Joseph Cheong only twice, but I see he has been selected five times.

fixed

Thank you. Excellent work putting this together. I can't wait for events to get going. Exciting stuff.

Thanks xander for putting this together. I'm interested to see how Bonomo, Chidwick and the other super high roller folks do this year. With the WSOP adding non-bracelet $25k & $50k events every weekend, I wonder if it will keep some high rollers on site who would otherwise be spending time at the Aria.

Oops, Max Pescatori was my highest priced pick.

Nonetheless, wishing him well as it sounds like he has much more important things to take care of.

No Ben Yu?

I'm not participating though I like to get to know these things: what do you guys think of this draft:

Kitai
Tonkaa
Gathy
Sontheimer
Deeb
Ohel
Lisandro
Greg Mueller
Bonomo
Chidwick

I think it is too NL high roller heavy although i really like Sontheimer at 78. Ofcourse i forgot Ivey ...
Would never pick greg mueller again also.
Really liked Kitai and Gathy (as a Belgian myself and at that price)

Deeb... dunno

Funny, I almost didn't take Chidwick because I figured so many others would. But ultimately, No. 1-ranked player in the GPI + only 171 in salary = good value for this contest.

Not sure why I didn't pick Bonomo. He's very high on all of my lists and he only costs 157. Joseph Cheong is in the same boat.

I literally ell oh elled at the inclusion of this Tweet among the others.

This was me. When I first assembled my team, it came out to about 1100 in salary. So I lopped someone off and went with the highest-priced player on my list who still fit under my cap. Not sure if trying to get as close to 1500 as possible is optimal strategy, but I look to do it (as do many others, it seems).

does bonomo or chidwick binking SHRB mean they play less this summer, especially rule out anything below 10ks.

I'm guessing you are more than fine. Just went for 129 of the 200 budget in the 25k, basically same as Negreanu who went for 131.

I'd say Bonomo would play more because of tax reasons
Chidwick who doesn't have to worry about the tax will play the same as before because he's a beast who wants to play poker all the time and try to win a bracelet.

I'm not quite convinced about this draft...
Sontheimer especially will not be playing many events. I asked him on twitter and he told me he will only play the ME, one dropand 10k 6 max. That would probably all and stated himself that he is likely a very bad pick for every draft team.

Gathy is a good one imo as he is playing all events below 10k and a couple of 10k's prob.
Kitai I couldn't get any info from unfortunately.
Chidwick and Bonomo are already discussed.
Ohel is gonna play a full schedule so fine pick.
Deeb is always uncertain how many events he will be playing. If he plays it's for sure a good pick!
Rest I dunno...no info on them.

I'm pretty pleased with my team...

Daniel Negreanu
Stephen Chidwick
Justin Bonomo
Robert Mizrachi
Michael Mizrachi
Matt Glantz
Bryn Kenney
Michael Gathy
Dzmitry Urbanovich
Koray Aldemir

..when you consider I had to pick them on March 18th

How I looked at things:

Negreanu, Bonomo, Chidwick are going to play a big schedule including all high buy ins and mixed games

The Mizrachis and Glantz will play a lot of 10k mixed and Michael might play some high buy in NL

Michael Gathy did really well 2 years ago but not last year so he was pretty cheap. Seems to play a lot of the lower buy in mixed games. Is a grinder and I assumed he would be a unique pick (but guess not)

Bryn Kenney and Koray Aldemir are my high buy in no limit guys. I thought I should get a couple of these because they were cheap and with the extra high buy in NL events this year I thought good value

Urbanovich is a bit of a wild card. He might play a lot, he might not. He might play high buy ins, he might grind low buy ins. He might stick to NL or he might play all the mixed games.

Thoughts on this would be appreciated Pascal since you've seemed to reach out to most people.

You have a fine team. Except a couple players I'm not really familiar with, I think I considered everyone else on your team (BK was pretty quick toss due to my selection parameters, but seems like a good bargain pick).

Perhaps my toughest decision was whether to go with Chidwick & Bonomo, and I didn't in large part because I couldn't decide which of my top 4 to discard (would had to have been Ohel or Shack-Harris, or else further changes would have been necessary).

I was on the Urbanovich bandwagon last year and he bricked more than the Houston Rockets did in their recent game 7, so wasn't going down that road again, but not much to lose as long as you know he's going to play.

I figured one Mizrachi was enough (haha) and while I like Glantz and he may cash a lot, did not expect many deep runs from him.

My only real question is why did you go with Kid Poker? I don't mean him specifically, but it appears the teams are pretty evenly divided along this line: Those that spent ~300+ on a single player, and those that didn't. Last year you were in the "spread the wealth" camp and finished top ~25%(?), so just wondered why you changed strategies this year?

I guess I look at it as there is 750 excess to spend (1500 - [10 x 75 min.]).
A player like DNegs at 462 is 387 over min., or over half of your excess.
It just seems like one is depending quite a lot on one player.

I wasn't even considering Ivey, until I saw a very brief interview with him from May 15. The interviewer asked if he was going to play NLHE or mixed games at WSOP, and he just said "I'm playing WSOP." What I took from that is:

* This is Phil Ivey, returning after 4 year absence from WSOP
* He's on a roll and has $$ in his pockets after couple of huge scores in HK
* He seemed focused/determined to play WSOP (not ruling out non-WSOP high rollers and/or cash, but mainly WSOP I'm guessing)

Someone mentioned possible bracelet bets, which didn't even cross my mind, but that makes perfect sense given his history and his demeanor & words in that interview. That interview was right before he scored another $1.6+ MM in HK, the implications of which could be interpreted various ways, but if he already made bracelet bets, then I don't see it substantially changing his schedule. Who knows how much WSOP he'll actually play, but it's Phil Ivey for minimum... I originally had Seidel and couldn't find any info on whether he'd play WSOP, so it seemed like a no-brainer.

I purposely stayed away from the Bonomo/Chidwick types as they seem less bracelet driven and may well concentrate their time on the weekly non-bracelet hi rollers.

I picked him for 3 reasons:

1). He's going to get loads of coverage which means loads of sweat for me
2). He's going to play all the mixed games and high rollers which is good
3). I figured as he was expensive he wouldn't be picked by lots of people (which kinda worked out, only 5 other people picked him).

If I couldn't make a decent team out of my remaining points then I'd ditch him from the team in a second, but I managed to find a team I was happy with so I went for it.

25k fantasy draft happened which is always a nice indicator of how much of your team is going to participate:

Player	Cost
Negreanu	131
Obst	129
Chidwick	97
Mercier	91
Racener	88
Adam Owen	86
Monnette	82
Ben Yu	81
Glaser	77
Leah	77
Hellmuth	71
R. Mizrachi	68
Marco Johnson	67
Zinno	65
Ohel	64
Volpe	61
Bonomo	55
Buchanan	53
Deeb	52
Chris Vitch	50
Ferguson	50
Ivey	50
Bojang	50
Zhukov	48
Jesse Martin	43
Hastings	43
Klodnicki	42
ODB Baker	41
Shack Harris	40
Adi Prasetyo	38
Foxen	34
Phillip Hui	33
Dan Zack	32
Jerry Wong	32
Yockey	31
Watson	30
Wasserson	28
Joey Couden	27
Kassela	27
Dan Smith	26
Ryan Hughes	26
Dylan Linde	26
Rep Porter	25
Schulman	25
Elezra	24
Clements	23
Brunson	20
Ramos	19
Gregorich	17
David Bach	16
Jon Turner	15
Bakes Baker	14
Noah Bronstein	14
Belianin	14
Gorodinsky	13
Painter	13
Imsirovic	13
Glantz	12
Prociak	12
Ray D.	12
Hennigan	12
Zhigalov	11
M. Mizrachi	10
Bleznick	10
Maria Ho	9
Sammartino	9
Jake Schwartz	9
Ramdin	9
Ryan Reiss	7
Benyamine	6
Bart Hanson	6
Adam Friedman	5
Laplante	5
Grapenthien	5
Kornuth	4
Kessler	4
Rast	4
Kenney	4
Ari Engel	4
Siever	3
Esther Taylor	3
Noori	3
Pham	3
Mike Ross	3
Ian Johns	3
Craig Chait	3
Drinan	2
Dan Weinman	2
Jeff Madsen	2
Mckeehen	1
Darren Elias	1
Shorr	1
Cal Anderson	1
Mateos	1
Matusow	1
Koon	1
Kathy Liebert	1
Chino Rheem	1
Mike Wattel	1
Sotiropolous	1
Rutter	1
Vornicu	1
Zaichenko	1
Zamani	1
Brock Parker	1
Luneau	1
Urbanovich	1
Ausmus	1
Pescatori	1
Israelashvili	1
Spurlin	1
Hawkins	1
Marchese	1
Fast	1
Esfandiari	1
Hallert	1
Charania	1
Wolanski	1
Vieira	1
Campbell	1

8 of my players were drafted and they went for a combined 378.

Their system throws out a lot of overpriced players because of team owner ego/really wanting to double down on themselves and also a lot of underpriced players when you get to the later rounds, but it's still nice to look at.

How many of y'all can beat 378?

I’ve got 333 from 6 players

All 10 of my players were drafted, but only got to 308

I wonder how many people that drafted Chidwick, Bonomo have both?

9 of my players were selected for a total of 384. 👌 And IMO I purposely faded Chidwick/Bonomo because I knew at their specific prices they’d be the heavy chalk. Also think both (Bonomo for sure) will be spending most of their time at the Aria where the nosebleed no-limit tourneys will be taking place all summer therefore their highest implied ROI. Just don’t see them grinding the random 1.5k Stud tourneys when they can play a 25k NL down the street. Hope it works of for me because obv if they win multiple bracelets the half the field who owns them are battling it out for first while I’ll be on the sideline with regret. Also for the record the 25k fantasy team Gridiron who chose them both didn’t seem like they did their research as they also selected Max Pescatori who said on Twitter recently he was likely to skip the entire series as well as Ian Johns who said he was only likely to play 10-15 events (although that could still end up to be good value since he’s a crusher). So the prices Chidwick/Bonomo went for aren’t necessarily indicative of the true value to me personally. But I’m prepared to be wrong! It’s a long summer. I hope this post ages well lol. Good luck all.

Yeah I definitely spent up early.
Interested in thoughts on mine
Dutch Boyd
Steven Chidwick
Daniel Negreaunu
Conor Beresford
Justin Bonomo
Davidi Kitai
Nick Pupillo
Sam Greenwood
Greg Raymer
Melanie Weisner

Glaser 77
R. Mizrachi 68
Marco J. 67
Ohel 64
Ivey 50
Shack-Harris 40
Porter 25
T. Brunson 20
Prociak 12
Benyamine 6

429 total

According to this, I should have done something like take Chidwick & Volpe (who I also strongly considered) instead of Shack-Harris & Brunson, which would be very reasonable.

Anyone who scores less than Adam’s randomly picked team should get a special under title