Koray Aldemir Is Crushing the $25K Fantasy Value Curve

Koray Aldemir won the 2021 Main Event for $8 million, and in the $25K Fantasy contest, he's still the most underpriced player relative to what he's producing.

Across 5,015 teams on 25kfantasy.com, Aldemir sits at a +231 delta between his actual scoring output (301.1 points) and what ODB's isotonic curve expects from a player drafted at his average price of $18.10. That expected figure? Just 70 points. He's outperforming his price tag by more than 4x.

Only one player in the field has a higher delta: Naoya Kihara, who's at +379. But Kihara's price ($1.10) makes his surplus a different animal entirely. He was essentially free. Aldemir cost real salary-cap dollars and still returned four times the expected value.

Only one player in the entire 5,015-team field has a higher delta than Aldemir, and that player cost $1.10.

Why the Market Missed Him

Aldemir's $18.10 price suggests drafters viewed him as a mid-tier asset. That's surprising for a former Main Event champion with $13.8 million in lifetime live tournament earnings, but the $25K Fantasy market is forward-looking, not backward-looking. It prices current summer form, not career résumé. And heading into the WSOP, Aldemir apparently didn't generate enough buzz to push his cost into the premium tier.

The result: 281 teams drafted him at an average of $18.10. That's 5.6% ownership across the field. For context, Calvin Anderson sits on 456 teams (9.1% ownership) at a higher price of $22.60 and has produced 225.7 points against a 72.5 expected baseline. Anderson's delta of +153.2 is excellent. Aldemir's is 50% higher.

The Leaderboard Around Him

To understand Aldemir's position, look at who surrounds him on the value curve.

The top five value beats in the contest:

• Naoya Kihara: $1.10 price, 412 points, +379 delta (2.7% ownership)
• Koray Aldemir: $18.10 price, 301.1 points, +231 delta (5.6% ownership)
• Yueqi "Rich" Zhu: $1.00 price, 229 points, +196 delta (0.6% ownership)
• Quan Zhou: $1.00 price, 193 points, +160 delta (1.1% ownership)
• Calvin Anderson: $22.60 price, 225.7 points, +153 delta (9.1% ownership)

Three of those five players were drafted at $1.00 or $1.10. Their deltas are inflated by a rock-bottom baseline expectation of 33 points. Aldemir and Anderson are the only players on this list who cost meaningful salary and still crushed projections.

What It Means for Rosters

If you drafted Aldemir, you got a former Main Event champion at a mid-tier price who is producing like a top-shelf asset. The 301.1 points he's generated would be impressive at any price point. At $18.10, it's borderline absurd.

If you didn't draft him, the lesson is sharper: the market systematically undervalued a proven WSOP performer because his price didn't reflect his ceiling. The 94.4% of teams without Aldemir are paying for that miss right now.

With the WSOP summer series still in progress, Aldemir's scoring isn't finished. But even if he flatlines from here, the value has already been captured. The gap between $18.10 and 301.1 points is the kind of market inefficiency that wins fantasy contests.