Editor
Team BTG is still the front-runner in the WSOP $25K Fantasy League after five weeks of action. Despite it being a hot news week for the WSOP, there was little movement at the top of the Fantasy tables, except for Team Lady Gaga moving up one spot to second.
Michael Mizrachi won the Poker Players Championship for a jaw-dropping fourth time, but unfortunately, he went undrafted this year. His older brother, Robert, is on Team Splashy Octopi but has had a disappointing series so far, earning only 29 points.
The series is now at about its three-quarter mark, with 73 of the 100 tournaments having crowned a bracelet winner. The final two weeks will make up the home stretch and are bound to be full of action, despite this week’s lull. Since the last update, there have been slight movements, but the overall structure of the standings remains the same.
Although Team BTG remains at the top and has added some points to its total, the runners-up are closing the gap and showing more momentum. With its lead reduced to 123 points, a single bracelet in a significant event could catapult a competitor ahead of BTG.
Current Standings
Team BTG — 924 points
BTG sat in first place last week with 907 points and added just 17 points during week 5. Dylan Linde is still the highest point-getter for the team with 296 points, with Nick Guagenti and Punnat Punsri chipping in a respectable 153 and 125 points, respectively. Guagenti added 11 points since last week with a 12th-place finish in Event #63: $1,500 Limit Triple Lowball Draw. All other gains for the week were minor one- and two-point additions.
Team Lady Gaga — 801 points
Team Lady Gaga is the big mover of the week, leap-frogging Team Dinkers into second place from third by adding 128 points on the week from last week’s 673 total. João Vieira was the largest contributor to this jump, with 61 points from the $50K Poker Players Championship (PPC), where he finished in 5th place. Alex Foxen also contributed a solid 48 points for a final table appearance in the $10L PLO championship, where he ultimately finished 7th.
Team Dinkers — 798 points
Team Dinkers was surpassed for second place and now sits in third, though trailing by only a few points. Their only big score from the week was Allan Le, who finished 7th in the $1,000 Battle For the Ages for 50 points.
Rounding Out the Top Five
- Team Brown’s Bargain Bin (731 points) – Moving from fifth to fourth, this team added a substantial 96 points over the course of the past week. Scott Bohlman was the primary contributor, with 48 points for a runner-up finish in $3,000 Limit Hold’em, while Jeff Madsen added 34 points from the $2,500 Mixed Big Bet for his fifth place finish.
- Team Survivor Sweat (681 points) – Entering the top five for the first time, Survivor Sweat is relying heavily on Marco Johnson, who has individually contributed 201 points, including most recently 21 points for a ninth-place finish in the $50K PPC.
Can Anyone Catch BTG?
Despite a lackluster week, Team BTG still enjoy a three-figure lead. With a few more results to pad that margin, they could put themselves out of reach. The team includes several No-Limit Hold’em specialists with good chances to go deep in the Main Event and other important tournaments in the final two weeks of the series.
Lady Gaga and Dinkers are the only teams within striking distance. Middle-of-the-pack teams are now in the 500-point range and would need multiple bracelets to get back into contention in the home stretch.
Still, the Main Event always has the potential to be decisive, with a 3x multiplier applied to its points, which are high to begin with due to the field size. The official scoring rules award 75 points for any win, plus 100 for a deep run in a field of around 10,000 players. Any other $10,000 buy-in event would double that to 350 points, but the special 3x multiplier for the Main Event means a win would be worth around 525.
