The First Mixed-Game Cash of the Summer Just Moved a Fantasy Team Nobody Was Watching

Aaron Kupin busted 22nd in the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo at 4 a.m., collected $6,743, and quietly moved a fantasy team most people forgot about.

The team is Back Office (Becker). And that $6,743 is the first mixed-game cash of the entire 2026 WSOP to register on the 25kfantasy.com leaderboard.

Why This Cash Matters More Than It Looks

That $6,743 is the first mixed-game cash of the entire 2026 WSOP to register on the 25kfantasy.com leaderboard.

Four events into the summer, most fantasy scoring has come from the predictable places — No-Limit Hold'em fields with big entry counts and familiar names. The $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better (Event #4, 7-handed) is a different animal. Smaller fields. Split pots. Weird runouts where half-pot scoops determine who bags and who walks. The kind of event that casual fantasy players don't think about when they're building rosters.

Back Office (Becker) had Kupin on the roster, and now they have points that nobody else's mixed-game picks have delivered yet. A 22nd-place finish in a $1,500 isn't going to vault anyone to the top of the overall standings. But it's early. And in a contest where the margins between 50th and 10th on the leaderboard can be a single deep run, $6,743 in scoring from Event #4 is real separation — especially when most rosters collected zero from this tournament.

That's the fantasy edge of mixed-game exposure in the first week: everyone else's Omaha Hi-Lo picks are still sitting at zero.

The Event Itself

Event #4 ground into Day 2 and was down to 17 players when the last update hit. Nolan Guagenti led with 2,100,000 in chips. Per Hildebrand — the Swedish pro with $900,971 in lifetime earnings and seven career final tables — sat second at 1,400,000. Yuhong Liu held 855,000.

Kupin was already out by then. His 22nd-place bust came right around the bubble of the two-table redraw, which means he survived deep enough to cash but didn't make the final push. For a fantasy roster, that's perfectly fine. Points are points. The difference between 22nd and 17th in a $1,500 buy-in is a few thousand dollars, but the difference between cashing and bricking is everything.

What Back Office (Becker) Should Be Thinking

The first week of WSOP fantasy is about survival math, not glory. You don't win the $25K contest in Event #4. You win it by accumulating small cashes across 90+ events while your opponents' rosters go cold for stretches.

Back Office now has a confirmed scorer in the mixed-game rotation. If Kupin is the kind of player who fires multiple mixed-game events this summer — and a player who cashes 22nd in Omaha Hi-Lo 7-handed usually is — this roster has built-in diversification that most teams lack. Hold'em-heavy rosters will feast during the big fields, but they'll starve during the Stud, Razz, and PLO weeks. A mixed-game player who runs even moderately well across those events is a portfolio hedge.

The Bigger Fantasy Signal

Four events in, we're still in the phase where a single cash can meaningfully move a team's position. That won't last. By Event #20, the leaderboard will stratify and small cashes will barely register.

Right now, though, $6,743 from a 22nd-place Omaha Hi-Lo finish is a real data point. Back Office (Becker) is on the board. The first mixed-game points of the summer belong to them.

Everyone else's split-pot picks are still at zero.