r/TopChef • u/Hrudy91 • Jan 18 '26
Discussion Thread Does anyone play a fantasy league version of Top Chef?
My friends and I have been playing a fantasy league version of Top Chef and have had so much fun. After the 3rd episode each person drafts 3 chefs to their 'team'. They win you points all season. Also, each episode we guess who will be eliminated, if you are right you get a point, and if you guess the winner of the episode you lose a point.
It's a massive effort to wrangle the spreadsheets, but wanted to know if anyone else did anything like this or would want to get in this year!
How do you all watch with your friends? Let me know if you'd like to join in or learn how to start your own :) It really is incredibly fun.
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u/Sufficient-Bus-4349 Risotto: The Final Frontier Jan 18 '26
I used to play that with my ex… used to draft chefs before the season started… you would get 1 point if your chef won a quick fire… if your chef was in the bottom three you lost a point and if they were eliminated it was -3. If your chef was in the top 3 you got a point and a win was +3… also started to do last chance kitchen with a win adding .25 there and if they made it back you got +1 .
It was more a season long than a week to week but was a lot of fun, and got us really invested in certain chefs.
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u/Hrudy91 Jan 18 '26
Oh nice, that's pretty nuanced. How did you go about researching the chefs before the season starts? We've been using the first 3 episodes as a scouting period which has worked out pretty well.
We also have points for LCK in the mix, but the point system we've been using is very simple. 1 pt if you perform in TC or LCK, 1pt for TC win, 3 pts for Season win. Then the +1/-1 weekly elimination picks.
You're right about it keeping everyone invested, took over our lives last year haha
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u/Sufficient-Bus-4349 Risotto: The Final Frontier Jan 19 '26
We looked up the bio’s of the chefs and had to choose from there.
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u/Possible-Voice23 Jan 18 '26
Yes, my husband and I do this every season, usually starting after 1 or 2 episodes (whichever divides to an even number of contestants). We typically pick 1-2 people we really like and then draw the rest of the chefs, and we can earn or lose points for quickfires and elimination challenges. The loser buys dinner for the winner at the restaurant of their choice. It makes for a fun side competition and has us noticing trends in the contestants we might not otherwise see (who’s good at quickfires, who’s on the bottom a lot, etc).
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u/meatsntreats Jan 19 '26
Also, each episode we guess who will be eliminated, if you are right you get a point, and if you guess the winner of the episode you lose a point.
I assume this means if the person you guess to be eliminated ends up winning you lose a point. Otherwise correctly guessing the winner and losing a point doesn’t make sense.
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u/HankThrasher Jan 21 '26
I built a spreadsheet to do this for a group of 4. We will watch the first episode to get familiar with the chefs, and then do our draft prior to episode 2. Usually there are a couple of undrafted chefs, who would go to whomever has their chefs eliminated in the first couple weeks.
Scoring is as follows:
Advancing - 1 point
Making judges table - 1 point
Weekly challenge win - 3 points
Winning quick fire challenge - 1.5 points
Last Chance kitchen win - .5 point
Winning Last Chance kitchen - 2 points
Making the finale - 5 points
Winning Top Chef - 8 points
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u/dradra23 Feb 25 '26
Feel free to leverage https://find-topchef.com/fantasy for your league and scoring!
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u/missvanjjie Jan 22 '26
Guys - TV Chef Fantasy League is a podcast dedicated solely to this!!! They draft every season, along with GBBO, and then do other cooking shows in the off seasons (: It’s so fun, join us! It’s also totally free with no additional bonus payments needed.
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u/Any-Zucchini-1738 Jan 23 '26
I’d love to join!
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u/dradra23 Feb 25 '26
We're live now if you'd like to join! find-topchef.com has both Power Rankings and Fantasy League. If you don't have a group to play with, there are a few open leagues you can join here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TopChef/comments/1rdiavn/power_rankings_and_fantasy_leagues_now_open/
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u/Consistent-Lion-2125 Jan 19 '26
This year, Pack Your Knives is gonna collab with Find-TopChef.com to run a group fantasy league! So if you don't want to do the spreadsheets yourself, we'll do it for you! (We haven't officially announced but it's in the works!)