Koray Aldemir Is the Biggest Fantasy Bargain of the 2026 WSOP

The Number That Matters

Koray Aldemir has 301.1 fantasy points at an average draft price of $18.10. That's a +231-point surplus over expected value — the largest of any player in the 2026 $25K Fantasy contest across all 5,017 teams.

At $18.10, the ODB isotonic curve projects roughly 70 points of output. Aldemir has returned more than four times that. And only 5.6% of teams even have him rostered.

At $18.10, the ODB isotonic curve projects roughly 70 points of output — Aldemir has returned more than four times that.

What the Surplus Actually Means

Fantasy poker rewards two things: raw point accumulation and cost efficiency. You can roster a $90 player who scores 180 points and feel good about it — but you've spent half your budget on a player who barely beat the curve. Aldemir at $18.10 scoring 301.1 points is an entirely different animal. He's generating elite production at a near-minimum price, freeing cap space for the rest of a roster.

To frame how extreme this is: the second-largest surplus in the contest belongs to Naoya Kihara, who is returning 255.4 points at a $1.10 draft price — a +222-point delta. That's a massive beat in its own right. Aldemir's lead over Kihara is still nearly nine points of surplus, and he's doing it at a price tier that isn't the absolute floor.

The rest of the top-five surplus board drops off fast. Yueqi "Rich" Zhu sits at +196, Quan Zhou at +160, and David "ODB" Baker at +135.5. Nobody else is within 100 points of Aldemir.

The 5.6% Problem

Here's what makes Aldemir's production sting for the field: at 5.6% ownership, 94.4% of teams are watching this surplus happen without him on their roster. His 281 teams are benefiting from production that was essentially free relative to salary-cap constraints. Everyone else paid market rate for a Main Event champion and got nothing — because they didn't draft him at all.

Contrast that with someone like Michael Moncek, who appeared on 102 teams at an $88.70 average price and has returned just 68 points against an expected 151.9 — a -83.9 bust. Moncek's owners paid premium dollars for a player who's underwater by nearly half his projection. Aldemir's owners paid bargain-bin prices for the single best return in the contest.

Why This Tracks

Aldemir won the 2021 WSOP Main Event for $8 million, but his style has never generated the kind of Twitter discourse that follows louder players. He grinds events methodically, stacks small cashes, and occasionally breaks through deep. That profile is exactly what fantasy rewards: consistent entries, frequent min-cashes that generate base points, and the occasional deep run that spikes the total.

The market priced him like a mid-tier roster filler. He's performing like the overall fantasy MVP.

What It Means for Your Roster

If you have Aldemir on your team at $18.10, you're holding the single most efficient asset in the contest. If you don't, the damage is already significant — but the real question is whether his production continues through the back half of the WSOP schedule, and whether the 94.4% of teams without him can find a comparable surplus elsewhere.

The leaderboard says that's a hard ask. Nobody else is close.