Late Fantasy Game

W.D. and I decided to a $50 fantasy game for the main event. I'm not much of a fan of these things, but I know W.D. is into it, and it looked like it might be enjoyable. W.D., experienced from his fantasy football games, organized the draft at all that. I just had to make the picks.

Both of us knew whoever won the coin flip was going to take Daniel Negreanu, and W.D. got him. Negreanu, being so skilled and having a big stack is likely to place high. W.D., actually, thinks that Negreanu could carry his whole team by himself!

The rest of W.D.'s picks were well-known pros. I held on to my list of “tournament players you've only vaguely heard of but make the a lot of cashes”. The picks shook out this way:

My Players	My Chips	W.D.'s Players	W.D's Chips
Ken Jacobs	375,300	Daniel Negreanu	331,000
Allen Cunningham	172,900	Ted Forrest	130,900
David Chiu	154,700	Josh Arieh	85,600
David Pham	112,300	Humberto Brenes	148,300
Phi ‘John’ Nguyen	198,100	Joseph Hachem	114,100
TOTAL CHIPS	1,013,300	TOTAL CHIPS	809,900

My picking theory was this: the key is chip count. Almost any people we might pick have a strong ability to get there and make a huge cash. However, whoever has the largest chip count has the biggest equity. My picking strategy, therefore, was to make sure I had really strong, consistent tourney players whose total chip counts added up to more than W.D's team.

W.D.'s strategy was clear. He picked players whose game he knew and had reasonable chip stacks. I would have liked to get either Forrest or Hachem, probably instead of Phi Nguyen. I could have gotten them, since they were W.D.'s last picks and he wouldn't have thought to pick any of the lesser known pros I was going for, other than Cunningham.

BTW, the winner is the team that has the most cashed money in the main event. FWIW, the full payout structure is now available.