$25K Fantasy at the Midpoint: The Five Names Winning the Meta-Game

Koray Aldemir is averaging 301.1 points on a $18.10 price tag — 231 points above what the ODB isotonic curve expects at that salary. He sits on just 5.6% of teams. Patrick Leonard, the most-owned player in the contest at 10.5%, is averaging 89.7 points at $32.30.

That's the $25kFantasy midpoint in one sentence: the field is paying nearly double for a third of the output.

The Chalk Board

Across 5,017 teams in the 25kfantasy.com contest, eight players clear 7% ownership. Here's how they've performed against their draft cost:

| Player | Own % | Teams | Avg Price | Avg Score | Pts/$ | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Patrick Leonard | 10.5% | 529 | $32.30 | 89.7 | 2.78 | | Calvin Anderson | 9.1% | 456 | $22.60 | 139.4 | 6.17 | | Phillip Hui | 9.1% | 455 | $20.60 | 60.6 | 2.94 | | Shaun Deeb | 9.0% | 453 | $95.00 | 220.8 | 2.32 | | Ari Engel | 8.6% | 433 | $12.50 | 93.6 | 7.49 | | Scott Seiver | 8.5% | 427 | $55.20 | 173.7 | 3.15 | | Bryce Yockey | 7.4% | 369 | $37.70 | 142.6 | 3.78 | | Brian Rast | 7.3% | 365 | $40.40 | 189.7 | 4.69 |

The field loves Leonard. Over one in ten teams carries him. But at 2.78 points per dollar, he's the second-worst value among the top eight by that metric — only Shaun Deeb, at $95 and 2.32 pts/$, is more expensive per point. Deeb's raw score (220.8) at least provides a high ceiling. Leonard's 89.7 doesn't.

Koray Aldemir is averaging 301.1 points on a $18.10 price tag — 231 points above what the ODB isotonic curve expects at that salary.

The Value Five

The ODB isotonic curve maps what a player should score at a given draft price, smoothing the noise out of the salary-performance relationship. A positive delta means the player beat the curve. A negative delta means the roster slot underperformed. Here are the five largest positive deltas at midpoint:

| Player | Own % | Avg Price | Avg Score | Expected Pts | Delta | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Koray Aldemir | 5.6% | $18.10 | 301.1 | 70.0 | +231.1 | | Naoya Kihara | 2.7% | $1.10 | 254.4 | 33.0 | +221.4 | | Yueqi "Rich" Zhu | 0.6% | $1.00 | 229.0 | 33.0 | +196.0 | | Quan Zhou | 1.1% | $1.00 | 193.0 | 33.0 | +160.0 | | David "ODB" Baker | 0.4% | $51.00 | 240.0 | 104.5 | +135.5 |

Two things jump out.

First, three of the five — Kihara, Zhu, and Zhou — were minimum-price players ($1–$1.10). At floor price, the expected output is just 33 points. Kihara blew past that by 221.4. Zhu by 196. These are the kinds of names that nobody drafts because the price signals "irrelevant" — and that's exactly why they're league-winners on the teams that have them. Zhu is on 29 teams total. Twenty-nine, out of 5,017.

Second, Aldemir combines high absolute output (301.1, higher than anyone else on this list) with a price low enough to leave salary for a stacked roster elsewhere. At $18.10, he costs $14.20 less than Leonard and outscores him by 211.4 points on average.

The Bust List

The other side of the ledger is just as instructive:

| Player | Own % | Avg Price | Avg Score | Expected Pts | Delta | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Blaz Zerjav | 0.8% | $57.00 | 1.0 | 104.5 | −103.5 | | Michael Moncek | 2.0% | $88.70 | 66.5 | 151.9 | −85.4 | | David "ODB" Baker | 0.8% | $61.00 | 25.0 | 109.9 | −84.9 | | Aditya Prasetyo | 0.2% | $38.00 | 17.0 | 89.0 | −72.0 | | Bryn Kenney | 1.1% | $20.00 | 8.3 | 70.0 | −61.7 |

Sharp-eyed readers will notice David "ODB" Baker appears on both lists. That's not an error — it reflects the split among teams that drafted him at different price points. The 18 teams that got Baker at $51 are seeing a +135.5 delta. The 40 teams that paid $61 are underwater by −84.9. A $10 difference in draft price, same player, opposite outcomes. That's the salary-cap game in miniature.

Moncek hurts the most in absolute terms: at $88.70, he's the second-most-expensive bust, and his 2.0% ownership means 102 teams are carrying that anchor. Zerjav is functionally a zero — 1.0 points scored at a $57 price.

The Meta-Game Takeaway

The midpoint data tells a clear story. The winning strategy so far isn't paying up for consensus names. It's finding the Aldermirs and Kiharas — players priced as afterthoughts who've scored like headliners.

Of the five best value plays, none cracks 6% ownership. Of the eight most-owned players, only Calvin Anderson (6.17 pts/$) and Ari Engel (7.49 pts/$) are returning top-tier value relative to cost. The rest of the chalk — Leonard, Hui, Deeb at his price — is performing at or below curve.

With the second half of the WSOP schedule still ahead, the rosters sitting on low-ownership, high-delta players have the most room to separate from the field.

Methodology Note

All data sourced from the $25kFantasy contest at 25kfantasy.com, snapshot taken June 16, 2026, across 5,017 registered teams. "Expected Pts" derived from the ODB isotonic-curve model, which fits a monotone-increasing regression to the observed price-score relationship, smoothing out individual variance to produce a fair-value baseline at each salary level. Delta = actual average score minus isotonic expected score. Points-per-dollar (Pts/$) calculated as average score divided by average draft price. Players appearing on both the beat and bust lists were drafted at materially different price points across different team cohorts.