Ari Engel Is the Most Popular Player in $25kFantasy. He Costs $11.
With 3,815 teams locked in, the cheapest chalk play in the contest is also the most rostered — and that creates a problem.
Ari Engel sits on 11% of all $25kFantasy rosters, making him the single most owned player in a contest with 3,815 teams. His price tag: $11.30.
That's not a typo. The most popular pick in the entire field costs less than a buy-in to a Fremont Street sit-and-go.
The Chalk Board
Here's the full top-eight ownership picture across all 3,815 rosters on 25kfantasy.com:
- Ari Engel — 11.0% owned (419 teams), $11.30 price, 96.4 avg projected score
- Shaun Deeb — 10.1% (385 teams), $88.30 price, 249.0 avg projected score
- Brian Rast — 9.1% (346 teams), $37.30 price, 199.1 avg projected score
- Scott Seiver — 8.7% (332 teams), $48.30 price, 208.5 avg projected score
- Adam Friedman — 8.3% (317 teams), $20.60 price, 88.2 avg projected score
- Robert Mizrachi — 8.3% (317 teams), $30.00 price, 90.0 avg projected score
- James Obst — 8.3% (315 teams), $28.00 price, 138.3 avg projected score
- Mike Matusow — 8.2% (312 teams), $3.80 price, 80.4 avg projected score
Two things jump off that list.
Ari Engel and Mike Matusow cost a combined $15.10 and appear on roughly one in five rosters, which means a huge chunk of the field is building around the same budget backbone.
The Engel Paradox
Engel's ODB projection of 96.4 points isn't eye-popping on its own. Deeb projects at 249.0. Seiver at 208.5. Rast at 199.1. All of those are significantly higher ceilings.
But Engel's appeal isn't about ceiling. It's about salary flexibility. At $11.30, slotting him into your roster frees up dollars to afford a Deeb ($88.30) or a Seiver ($48.30) elsewhere. He's the connector piece that lets you stack premium players at the top of your lineup.
The risk: when 419 teams are running the same connector, you're not gaining ground on the field with his points. You're just keeping pace. Engel essentially becomes a neutral-EV roster slot for over a tenth of the contest. If he busts early, it barely hurts relative to the field. If he goes deep, it barely helps.
The Matusow Factor
Matusow at $3.80 is the other budget anchor. He projects at 80.4, and 312 teams have him locked in. Pair Engel and Matusow together and you've spent $15.10 for a combined 176.8 projected points across two slots. That leaves serious cap space for premium options.
But again, 8.2% of the field is doing the same thing. And Matusow's floor is genuinely zero. At $3.80, the market is pricing in a high probability that he plays a limited WSOP schedule. If he fires a handful of events and whiffs, those 312 teams eat a dead roster spot.
Where the Leverage Lives
The contrarian play here sits in the middle of the board. Friedman ($20.60, 88.2 projected), Mizrachi ($30.00, 90.0 projected), and Obst ($28.00, 138.3 projected) are all clustered between 8.3% and 8.3% ownership. They're popular enough to be consensus picks, but none of them are truly chalk at the Engel or Deeb level.
Obst stands out. His 138.3 projected score at a $28.00 price gives him the best points-per-dollar ratio of anyone in the mid-tier. At 8.3% ownership he's not a contrarian dart throw, but he's far less correlated with the field than Engel.
If you want to differentiate your roster, the move isn't avoiding Deeb or Engel at the extremes. It's finding the mid-salary players that 91% of the field is ignoring. The top eight names above account for a combined ownership north of 70%. That leaves a lot of the player pool barely touched.
The field is building from the edges in. The edge might be building from the middle out.
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