With my personal WSOP at its end, only one big sweat remains : the conclusion of the 25K fantasy draft (alternatively here, and official standings here).  I’ve never participated in any sort of draft before this one and was worried that I’d make a bunch of dumb mistakes so I tried my best to prepare by doing a lot of research on players before the draft began.  The best decision made may have been splitting the team with my rungood and name brother Jason Mercier as we successfully powered a red-hot freight train of 8 people (well, 7 people), taking a sizeable lead with just one tournament left.

With just the main event remaining, here is the potential scoring to be won per finisher (tiny caveat: I’ve been wrong before, and remember, the draft pays out points based on the chips at the final table, not on the actual November Nine finishes):

1st: 236pts
2nd: 226pts
3rd: 216pts
4th: 206pts
5th: 196pts
6th: 186pts
7th: 176pts
8th: (15+68)*2 = 166pts
9th: (10pts+68pts)*2 = 156pts
10th-18th : (5pts+68pts (field bonus)) *2 = 146pts
19th-693rd : 2 pts

Huge, 144 point bubble here between 19th and 18th (the average team right now has 324.5 points total).  Taking a look at the current leaderboard (courtesy of www.25Kfantasy.com),

Theoretically, nobody is out, as even Shchemelev could win with enough multiple final table finishes from his team, but more reasonably, let’s look at what it would take for a single enemy draft member to push us from the lead (assuming our team bricks).  Erick’s team is 199 points behind and needs a 4th or better, Todd’s is 211 points behind, needing a 3rd or better, and Bord’s is 232 behind and would need a 1st to win.  All other teams would need at least two top 18 finishes, which would net a minimum of 292 points (although two 10th-18ths alone would only be enough to push mastr/ZJ’s team into 1st).  There are a ton of sidebets, and with a total of 4 spots officially paying ($225k/$93.75k/$37.5k/$18.75k), plenty of the other teams might have a sweat if someone in the middle of the pack starts a deep run.

Being that I don’t have much else to do these days and with no online poker on the horizon I have very little gambling to look forward to for awhile, so I’ll be enjoying my last decent-sized sweat by keeping a close eye on this.  I’ll update this again with chip standings and a clearer picture of any potential close calls as the WSOP main event progresses.