Fantasy Pro Tour Nice Results

There were 2,722 entries for Fantasy Pro Tour Nice. The most popular player was Jon Finkel, with 549 selections. The second-most was Ed Fear, who came off his DCI suspension with an attractive Pro Point value of zero. Fear provided a solid return on the investment, coming in ninth.

The winning team was turned in by Thomas Dall Jensen, who picked champion Eivind Nitter for $30,000; quarterfinalist Svend Geertsen for $15,000; Jeff Fung, whose twelfth-place finish earned him $4,500; and Thomas Preyer and his $630-earning 52nd-place finish. Jensen's team was worth $50,130 and also featured Jon Finkel, Mattias Jorstedt, Rickard Österberg, and Elijah Pollock

Jack Stanton earned second place with a team worth $49,000. In addition to Nitter and Ed Fear's $6,000 ninth-place performance, Stanton picked Brian Davis, who finished fourth and took home $13,000. Also on the team were Øyvind Ødegaard, Noah Boeken, Adam Prokopin, Arto Hiltunen, and Seth Burn.

In third place, Thomas Refsdal's team earned $45,750. The first $45,000 came from Nitter and Geertsen, and Carl Thille contributed $750 by coming in 45th. Øyvind Ødegaard, Jon Finkel, Lorre Crnonori, Jim Herold, and Endre Skjetne were also on the team. If there were a prize for Day 1 performance, this team would have won easily, as only 16 teams had Day 1 leader Skjetne.

Fourth place went to Steven Shears, who earned $45,500 in Fantasy Money by starting with Eivind Nitter and added Gary Talim (seventh place, $7,500), Ed Fear (ninth place, $6,000), and Peter Szigeti (23rd place, $2,000). The non-money-winners on the team were Brian Hegstad, Johan Sadeghpour, Steven Shears himself, and Rory Draxler.

Jumping down to the teams that didn't earn prizes, Sean Smith finished in eleventh place with a team of only seven people. After Nitter, Fear, and Patrick Mello (27th place, $1,600), and the no-money performances of Gary Wise, Jim Herold, Ali Arnaud, and Jason Schickli Smith apparently decided he didn't need any more players.

Win de Boer did the best of anyone without champion Eivind Nitter. His nineteenth-place team earned $35,540 the hard way: Finalist Bram Snepvangers ($20,000), third-place finisher Svend Geertsen ($15,000), Jelger Wiegersma (60th, $540), David Humpherys and Joost van der Mandele (both out of the money) and a startling three empty slots.

The highest finish for a team that included Kai Budde (who absorbed all the points available, requiring the rest of the team to be zero-pointers) was a tie at sixtieth place: Jörn Hajek, Sean McKeown, and Tobey Tamber all took Budde's $9,500 and added Ed Fear, Mikko Punakallio(10th place, $5,500) and Zev Gurwitz (24th, $1,900).