By August Darnell | May 26, 2010

ESPN.com held its fifth annual poker fantasy draft last Friday, with twelve poker players and writers selecting eight players each to sweat throughout the World Series of Poker.  Points will be awarded for in-the-money finishes in this summer’s WSOP, with greater emphasis placed on the highest stakes events, those with buy-ins of $10,000 or more.

It’s a relatively simple scoring system.  Any finish in the money in a 2010 WSOP event earns a player 1 point.  A top 50 finish earns 2 points, a top 20 earns 5 points, and a final table appearance earns 10 points.  The bigger the tournament, the better, though, as for every 100 players in the field above the first 100, 1 bonus point will be awarded for a final table finish (ex: a final table appearance in a 300-player field would earn 10 points plus 2 more bonus points).  Final tablists will also earn bonus points depending on where they ultimately finish.  Ninth place will earn 1 more point, eighth will get 2, seventh will earn 4, sixth will win 6, fifth will receive 10, fourth will get 15, third will earn 20 points, second will get 30, and a first place finish will earn the player an extra 40 points.  In addition, all points will be doubled for tournaments with $10,000 buy-ins or greater.

Chops from WickedChopsPoker.com had the honor of making the first selection in the draft and, to nobody’s surprise, he went with seven-time WSOP bracelet winner, Phil Ivey.  Daniel Negreanu, last year’s runaway fantasy poker champ (he had both Ivey and triple-bracelet winner Jeffrey Lisandro) put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and chose himself.  After all, he is confident in his ability and knows that he will be playing in a lot of events, so he has to figure he has a good shot at scoring points.  ESPN.com poker editor Andrew Feldman went with the hot hand, selecting Jason Mercier with the third pick of the draft, while ESPN.com colleague Gary Wise followed that with five-time bracelet winner Allen Cunningham.  After Full Tilt Poker’s Howard Lederer chose fellow “old schooler” Barry Greenstein with the fifth pick, 2008 November Nine member Dennis Phillips completed the first half of the first round with 2008 WSOP Player of the Year Erick Lindgren.  Mark Seif kicked off the back-end of the first round with young online cash game marvel Tom “durrrr” Dwan in spot seven.  Bluff Magazine Editor-in-Chief Lance Bradley then took eight-time bracelet winner Erik Seidel with the eighth pick, followed by poker pro Bernard Lee going with 2000 WSOP Main Event champ Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and UB.com’s Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin chosing Scott Clements with the tenth pick.  To finish off the first round, Gavin Smith chose Huck Seed and Poker Pro Magazine’s Chad Holloway was able to nab all-time bracelet leader Phil Hellmuth with the final pick of the round.

Because it was a “snake” draft, Holloway then had the first pick of the second round and went with Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi.  Gavin Smith then followed Negreanu’s lead from the first round and picked himself, while Baldwin chose Matt Hawrilenko.  The remainder of the second round went Michael Binger, Lederer, Phil Galfond, Jeffrey Lisandro, John Juanda, Daniel Alaei, Bertrand Grospellier, Scotty Nguyen, and Carlos Mortensen.

The complete teams are as follows:

Chops: Phil Ivey, Carlos Mortensen, David Benyamine, Faraz Jaka, Brock Parker, Abe Mosseri, Tom Marchese, Josh Arieh

Daniel Negreanu: Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, David Chiu, Justin Smith, Todd Brunson, Freddy Deeb, Brett Richey, John Monnette

Andrew Feldman: Jason Mercier, Bertrand Grospellier, Chau Giang, Scott Seiver, David Pham, Alexander Kostritsyn, David Sands, Ryan D’Angelo

Gary Wise: Allen Cunningham, Daniel Alaei, Andy Bloch, Eli Elezra, Issac Haxton, Tom Schneider, Nick Schulman, Vitaly Lunkin

Howard Lederer: Barry Greenstein, John Juanda, Robert Mizrachi, Chad Brown, Matt Glantz, Amnon Filippi, Ralph Perry, Thor Hansen

Dennis Phillips: Erick Lindgren, Jeffrey Lisandro, JC Tran, David Singer, Brandon Cantu, Greg Mueller, John Phan, Nam Le

Mark Seif: Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond, Ted Forrest, Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harman, Johnny Chan, Mark Seif, Eric Froehlich

Lance Bradley: Erik Seidel, Howard Lederer, Chris Bjorin, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Patrik Antonius, Kenny Tran, Andrew Lichtenberger, Daniel Kelly

Bernard Lee: Chris Ferguson, Michael Binger, Paul Wasicka, Eric Baldwin, Max Pescatori, Dwyte Pilgrim, Roland De Wolfe, Jonathan Little

Eric Baldwin: Scott Clements, Matt Hawrilenko, Justin Bonomo, James Mackey, Shannon Shorr, Justin Young, James Van Alstyne, Michael Katz

Gavin Smith: Huck Seed, Gavin Smith, Jeff Madsen, Steve Sung, Bryan Devonshire, David Oppenheim, Chris Bell, Vivek Rajkumar

Chad Holloway: Phil Hellmuth, Sorel Mizzi, Mike Matusow, Annette Obrestad, David Williams, Jason Somerville, Phil Laak, Amit Makhija

ESPN.com will update the fantasy league standings as the World Series of Poker progresses.  The 2010 World Series of Poker kicks off this Friday, May 28th, with two events: the $500 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em tournament and the first open event, the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship, which is an eight-game mixed event.

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