Koray Aldemir Is the Best Value Pick in $25K Fantasy — and 94% of Teams Missed Him

For $18.10, you got a former world champion averaging 301 points, and 94.4% of teams missed him entirely.

Koray Aldemir sits on just 281 of 5,017 rosters at 25kfantasy.com. His ownership rate is 5.6%. His ODB expected points at that price? Seventy. His actual average score? 301.1. That's a +231-point delta, the largest value gap in the entire contest and it isn't particularly close.

At an average draft price of $18.10, Aldemir is outperforming the ODB price curve by 231 points, more than any other player in the field.

The Value Leaderboard

The ODB isotonic curve maps what a player should return at a given price. Aldemir is obliterating the curve. Here's who else is beating it:

• Yueqi "Rich" Zhu: Drafted at $1, scoring 229 points, +196 above expected. Only 29 teams own him (0.6%).
• Quan Zhou: Also $1, averaging 193 points, +160 over the curve. On 53 rosters (1.1%).
• David "ODB" Baker (the good version): 18 teams drafted him around $51, and those rosters are seeing 240 points, a +135.5 beat. More on Baker in a moment.
• Ali Eslami: Drafted at $2, returning 178.2 points, +130.2 above expected. On 70 teams (1.4%).

Notice the pattern. Three of the top five value plays were drafted at or near the minimum. The fourth, Aldemir, went for just $18.10. The contest's biggest edges came cheap.

The Bust Column Hurts

Now the other side of the ledger.

Blaz Zerjav tops the bust list. Drafted at an average of $57 across 39 teams, he's returned exactly 1 point. Expected at that price: 104.5. That's a -103.5 delta, real salary-cap damage.

Michael Moncek is the highest-ownership bust. He's on 102 rosters (2%) at an average price of $88.70, returning only 64 points against an expected 151.9. That -87.9 gap is quietly sinking a lot of lineups.

Martin Kabrhel rounds out the notable busts: 83 teams paid $69 and are getting 33 points back (-76.9).

And then there's the David Baker split. This is the strangest data point in the contest. The 18 teams that drafted Baker around $51 are seeing a +135.5 beat. The 41 teams that paid $61 are sitting at -85.9. Same player, two price tiers, a 221-point swing. If you got Baker at the lower price, he's one of your best assets. If you paid up, he's a crater.

What This Means for Your Roster

Aldemir's delta isn't just large in absolute terms. It's large relative to his price. At $18.10, he consumed almost nothing of a salary cap, which means the 281 teams that rostered him got an elite return while still having budget to spend on high-priced studs elsewhere. That's the definition of tournament-winning roster construction.

The Zhu and Zhou plays follow the same logic. Both went for $1, both are returning 4x to 6x expected value. The teams that found even one of these three have a structural edge that's hard to replicate through the top of the draft.

If you're looking at your roster and seeing a Zerjav or a $61 Baker, the math is tough but not fatal. The WSOP schedule still has weeks of events ahead. But if you're carrying Aldemir at $18.10, you're sitting on the single biggest edge the contest has produced so far.

Five percent ownership. Two hundred thirty-one points above the curve. That's the gap between reading the board and following the crowd.