This series ran across three regattas and 17 races: Dartmouth v Harvard Lights (3), Princeton Invitational (7), and The Dual (W) 2026 (7).
The top 6 were separated by just 28 points, and two of the coin-flip races the preview flagged in advance turned out to be exactly what separated the pack.
Final standings
| Rank | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|
| =1 | Mapes's | 510 |
| =1 | Joseph Koyfman | 510 |
| =3 | fergusmainland | 509 |
| =3 | mmmaurel | 509 |
| 5 | Fraser Innes | 483 |
| 6 | Finn F | 482 |
The shared base - where everyone agreed
All six players took essentially the same approach:
- Harvard Lights sweep - Lights 1V (34), 2V (39). All six had both.
- Princeton Invitational - Brown M 1V (34), Cal M 1V (28), Stanford M 1V (29). Everyone in.
- The big contrarian call: Virginia W 1V - the preview had this one 55/45 as "a mild upset brewing" and all six top players had it. It paid 45, the biggest single points haul of the Princeton card.
- Washington Dual sweep - Washington W 1V, 1V 4+, 2V, 2V 4+, 3V 4+, 4V. The 4V alone paid 51, the biggest prize of the whole series. Every top-6 player had these.
- The Washington W 3V surprise - the one Washington boat that didn't win. Washington W 3V scored 0. Five of the top 6 still backed Washington here and took the zero. Only Finn F broke ranks and picked California W 3V (29 pts).
What separated 1st from 3rd - one coin flip
The preview warned Syracuse W 1V vs Brown W 1V was on a knife-edge at 51/49. That race is literally the 1-point gap between rank 1 and rank 3:
- Mapes's and Koyfman went Syracuse W 1V → 30 pts
- fergusmainland and mmmaurel went Brown W 1V → 0 pts
That's the entire 510 vs 509 gap. One race, one lane-call, one point.
What separated 1st from 1st - nothing, via different routes
Mapes's and Koyfman tied at 510 despite picking differently on two Princeton races:
| Race | Mapes's | Koyfman |
|---|---|---|
| Rutgers/Princeton/Cornell W 1V (three-way) | Rutgers (0) | Princeton W 1V (29) ✓ |
| Syracuse v Penn M 1V | Syracuse M 1V (29) ✓ | Pennsylvania M 1V (0) |
Both ate one zero and landed one winner - same net, different paths. A neat illustration that there's more than one way to climb the leaderboard.
What separated the top 4 from 5/6 - the V4 trap
The gap from 509 to 483 is 26 points, and it comes almost entirely from one race: Dartmouth v Harvard Lights V4, flagged in the preview as a 51/49 coin flip.
- Top 4 all backed Harvard Lights V4 → 27 pts ✓
- Fraser Innes and Finn F both backed Dartmouth V4 → 0 pts
That single wrong coin-flip is almost exactly the gap. Fraser's book is otherwise identical to Koyfman's —> 510 - 27 = 483.
What separated 5th from 6th - the W3V / W2V 4+ trade
One point, one decision. Finn was the only top-6 player to back California W 3V against the Washington sweep - and he was right (+29 vs Fraser on that race). But he paid for it by also picking California W 2V 4+ (0) where Fraser took Washington W 2V 4+ (30). Net result: −1 for Finn, 483 vs 482.
The takeaway
Four of the six top players ran almost-identical books. The series wasn't won by finding hidden value, it was won by losing fewer coin flips. Specifically:
- Harvard Lights V4 - the coin flip that decided who was in the top 4 vs who wasn't
- Syracuse W 1V vs Brown W 1V - the coin flip that decided 1st vs 3rd
- Virginia W 1V - the one consensus upset everyone correctly called; skipping it would have buried you
The preview called the two races that mattered (V4 and Syracuse/Brown) both as 51/49, and they ended up being worth a combined 27 points of separation. The margins were as tight as the predictions said they'd be.
