Fewer Cashes, Better Scores: The Event #2 Roster Showdown

Two fantasy rosters cashed a combined nine players in WSOP Event #2, and the one with fewer cashes almost certainly scored more points.

The $5,000 8-Handed No-Limit Hold'em event just gave us the first meaningful head-to-head roster comparison of the 2026 25kfantasy.com season. On one side: Chocolate Factory, managed by Frederic Normand. On the other: Premiums Only, managed by Justin Fawcett. Both rosters lit up the sweat page. But the shape of their cashes tells two very different stories.

Chocolate Factory placed all four of its cashers inside the top 133, with Michael Gathy leading the way at 77th.

Chocolate Factory: Four Deep

Frederic Normand's roster put four players into the money in Event #2, and every single one of them ran deep.

Michael Gathy finished 77th, the highest placement of any fantasy-rostered player in the event. Joey Weissman wasn't far behind at 104th. Normand himself cashed in 132nd, and Benny Glaser landed at 133rd.

Four cashes. All clustered inside the top 135. That's not volume. That's density.

In the 25k scoring system, deeper finishes carry disproportionate weight. A 77th-place finish in a $5K event is worth meaningfully more than a 251st-place cash. When you stack four finishes that are all inside the top quarter of the money, the points accumulate fast.

Premiums Only: Five Wide

Fawcett's roster took the opposite approach, at least in outcome. Five players cashed, one more than Chocolate Factory. But look at the distribution.

Fawcett himself posted the best finish at 94th. Andrew Ostapchenko came in 147th, and Andrew "A.J." Kelsall placed 229th. Then the drop-off: Cherish Andrews finished 251st, and Dylan Linde rounded out the group at 299th.

That's a wide spread. Two of those five cashes barely scraped into the money. In standard fantasy scoring, the gap between 77th and 299th is enormous. The bottom of the payout structure returns minimal points, while a top-100 finish starts to move the needle.

Five cashes sounds better than four. It isn't, necessarily.

The Strategic Lesson

This is the classic fantasy poker tension: volume versus depth.

Premiums Only won the raw count. Five names on the sweat page feels great when you're refreshing at 2 a.m. But Chocolate Factory concentrated its scoring power where it matters most. Gathy at 77th likely outscored Andrews and Linde combined.

The 25k contest rewards top-heavy results. A single deep run can outscore three min-cashes. Normand's roster demonstrated that in Event #2. Four players, all with real depth, no filler cashes dragging the average down.

Fawcett's roster isn't in trouble. Five cashes across one event is a strong signal, and Fawcett's own 94th-place finish anchored the group. But the lesson is clear for anyone building a roster: don't chase quantity. The players who go deep are worth more than the players who merely survive.

What to Watch

Both rosters are active early, which is what you want in a long summer. The question is whether Chocolate Factory's depth-over-volume pattern holds across future events, or whether Premiums Only's wider net catches a deep run that flips the math.

Event #2 was one data point. But it was a revealing one. Nine combined cashes, two distinct strategies, and a scoreboard that almost certainly favors the roster with fewer names on it.