I read in the tips Sticky about a Wildcard strategy where you play the market in a long Gameweek. I'm a newbie and I don't think I get it.

As I (don't) understand it, the strategy is as follows:

1) At the beginning of a long Gameweek, I select Wildcard transfers and sell players who I think are going to fall in value and buy players who are going to rise in value.

2) As I get near the deadline I can sell the players who have risen in value for a profit, providing I don't need them in my squad.

Is that all there is to it? I can't help feeling that I'm missing something.

How can I turn a profit if the players who are going up in value are likely to be the ones I want to hold on to anyway?

Please can someone explain it in simple terms? I never studied economics!

Thanks

Yup.

Did you know that if you give an infinite number of chimps an infinite number of typewriters, eventualy they will type all the great books.

Thanks for the swift response!

Also, thanks for the chimp/typewriter tip. I know a bloke who knows someone who drinks with a guy who needs to offload an infinite number of typewriters, sharpish like. Just need to source an infinite number of chimps and I'm laughing...

I had to stare at this for five minutes before I could figure out what chimp was saying. Then I suddenly realized how it worked. I'm gonna be fpl RICH! *wrings hands*

Is gameweek 5 a ripe gameweek for this strategy (strategem?); is that why everyone's gone bananas talking about using the wildcard gameweek-5?

I did this last year and it worked a treat... The advice I would give is that you should keep an eye on the market in the week leading up to your WC. Then make sure you play the WC on the Saturday (ie After the GW deadline closes) so that you can buy and sell straight away. Think of it like a transfer amnesty for the week you do it. GW 5 is a prime time because the gap between deadlines is longer than 7 days because of the international break... giving you more time to make money.

B^llocks! I've just lost a long explaination due to FISO being a nightmare right now! (I know, should have 'Copy'd before hitting 'Submit').

Yes. The long GW5 is ideal as there are still loads of managers transfering and the market is at its most vibrant, before those who have a poor start desert their teams.

Last year a group of us here worked out how FPL's prices rise and fall. This is on the 'Crack the Code' thread (stickied).
We hope that this will be repeated this year, allowing us advanced notice of who's going up or down in price. Once the season starts keep a keen eye on the 'CtC' thread for a link to a website with these details.

Price rises work as follows:
For a player's price to rise 0.1 takes X,000 transfers.
For a player's price to rise 0.2 takes a further X,000 transfers x 2.
For a player's price to rise 0.3 takes a further X,000 transfers x 3 (or is it 4!?)

As we only get half of any 0.2/0.4/0.6 etc. rise in profit, and the chance of seeing a 0.4 rise in one gw is minimal, if you don't want to keep a player whose price has risen by 0.2 sell him immediately and re-invest in another, using the 'CtC' thread for guidance on who will rise that night.

Don't sell anyone who has already risen 0.1 in past GWs if there is a chance they'll make another 0.1 soon.

Don't sell anyone you want to buy back unless the 'CtC' thread says their price will drop - a drop of 0.1 is as good as a rise of 0.2 if you want that player!

If you already own someone who's price you suspect will only rise 0.1 all week, and you want to have the following gw, don't sell him at all. Chances are that you won't make more that 0.1 profit with that capital in the week, anyway.

Is that all clear? Ask again if not.

I half expected they might close this loophole for this season, like they did for the one where you pick a non-player as captain and put your best two players as first and second sub, so if one of them doesn't play, you'll still get a good captain. As far as anyone knows, the wildcard trick is still available?

Try to identify the teams that are going to do well in the two or three gw's prior to the WC and have a more difficult run post WC. Get these players in earlyish so they have time to rise nicely in price then offload them early in your WC week.

In theory it will work but might be a bit harder in reality.

More importantly, if you play your WC early you can take advantage of the teams/players that have been a surprise (both positively and negatively) while hopefully making a bit of profit.

I made 0.7m last season even though I didn't play the WC until the Monday. If I had played it on the Saturday I reckon I would have made about a million.

I'll try and find the thread that I started at the time...

Woah. Fan-effin-tastic! It seems so obvious having it explained but I'd have never thought about this trick left to my own. No it's actually well clear in that explanation, thanks a bunch (to all).

I referenced the crack-the-code thread often last year, but only to moniter players one-by-one during gameweeks, never to coordinate a real stock-market orgy.

Dixie, I think you're saying that when you pull the trick, you start it on the Saturday which is the first day of the long gameweek--or in other words, you start trading before the teams have even begun to play the games for that new gameweek.

Thinking....I'll find a way to bungle this for sure, somehow the gameweek will close with me having an entire Derby roster.

Yep... Do a transfer just after the 11.30 deadline (you only have to do one to start the process)... once you confirm the transfer you have the option to play your WC. Click yes and then every transfer you make until the next deadline is free. I think I made about 30-40 transfers the week I did it.

Just to clarify: I'm talking about a 0.4m rise on one player in one week, not in the entire squad!

Dixie: Can you clarify: Was that a 0.7 rise in team value, or did you make 0.7 profit (i.e 7 x 0.1 profits) during the long gameweek?

I used my WC around February and it completely destroyed my team. I could never get it back to what it was and dropped from 3k to 13k over the last 3 months. Beware who you select people

I think it was team value but that did then give me leeway when swapping players out after that week. I know that some definitely made more than me. Clearly it will be different every year but I remember just buying and selling every day. I then settled on my final team at the end of the week.

If I find my thread it will help a) my memory and b) explain it to others better.

Here's thethread (all 3 pages of it)... I haven't re-read it all yet but basically I posted on the thread what I was doing all through my wildcard period.

Probably worth a read if anyone is thinking of using it this way...


Cheers


Richie

Just wondering....

Did anyone NOT play their WC last season and have a successful campaign??
Could it be the distraction to destroy your hopes as Spencer4 found out?

The opportunity to make money can always corrupt even the most sensible of heads.

No, it's not. It's a valuable "get out of jail free" card best kept up your sleeve for midwinter when injuries/suspensions/reschedulings strike.

I propose again that the best use is to set a team straight while keeping the thought of making a bit of cash in mind. It just so happens that FF teams can often set straight early in the season, this FPL season has a long break after GW5 and player prices fluctuate quite a bit early on which makes it possible to make a profit.

Short answer is No - but I suppose it depends on what your definition of successful is.

There were a few who didn't play it (at least there were squads who didn't have a week where they made more than 1 transfer at a cost of 0 points - there's always the possibility of a mistake happening)

Highest place was (FISO/Overall) 79/11051, followed by 130/26186 - with 25 out of 301 not playing it - although a lot of those were fairly inactive squads.

I agree with CLL - it's worth hanging on to until you need it.

Really useful thread - thanks to all. Just to confirm: so I can buy a player at the beginning of my WC week, watch his price rise, then sell him later in the WC week and take the profit, even though I've never used him for a game? And me and my team of monkeys can do this an infinite number of times?

PS flyman - if you know you're going to write a long post, my tip is to write it in Word (or similar) then copy and past it in. That way there's no danger of losing it.

i see the wildcard as more of a gimmick than a loophole but know what you mean. if anything, i reckon they'll muck around with the code that many here worked so hard to crack last season.

i'll be nursing my team through the stock market orgy and watching all movers and shakers like a hawk. i've already done a mock-up post-wildcard team and really need to make a whole 2.0 mil to be able to do it.
i know that's a lot but i think it's possible.

i believe jenny whats-her-name which we based a jenninho sidecomp around last year finished up over 120 mil value by seasons end simply by playing a yahoo style buy and sell game. in playing that sidecomp and watching slarty/diamond plus's price movers (can't remember who was in the drivers seat at the time) i noticed how she really wasn't doing as good as she could've in the stock market. she could've got to over 130 or maybe even 140 mil value by seasons end.

Make it three of us in the keep it in reserve group.

That's exactly how you can use it Billy. At the end of the day I saw it as a way of picking up early bandwagons for no outlay plus making some money at the same time.

After my early WC tactic I ended up in the top 1% overall until Christmas... and it was only my bad management that dropped me down later on in the season.

"2006/07 465 1,206,092"

I take it you have yet to update the link in your www-button?

First season I played I finished with something like 111mil.

Yes... I haven't updated it yet... that's not my team you can see.

It would have been quite an impressive mis-management though

Funnily enough, I was top of my works league and around the 2k mark (overall ranking), when I played my wildcard (GW4 OR 5), and ended up dropping to 32k and ending the season just above 4k
Admittedly I didn't play my wildcard to make money, but still it was the turning point of my season - in a bad way!
I think this season I'm going to play it by ear, and now think the best time to play it is when it suits.
I still believe that the 'superior team value' notion is a fallacy. To make any use of that 'cash' you need to sell your players who have risen the most to 'liberate' the cash - fine if you think they've over performed, but if not, it's a nonsense - and also your team value will drop significantly (if that matters?!)
This is a really interesting debate, and I can see the value of being a few £0.1m better off, but I don't think playing the market can give you much of an advantage. "Look after the points and the the team value will look after itself" is my adage.
I've not made a definitive analysis of this, but last season, our works team winner had a team value which bore no relation to his overall position, and was well below those of us who finished a long way behind him.
Also in my best ever FPL season I took no interest in ' making a few quid' for the sake of it, and had a good season (52nd overall) - maybe i got lucky
Like I said, it's not really 'money in the bank', and I think this is the fallacy. When you sell your players that have 'made you the money' you lose out - unless they turn out to be subsequently useless.
I would though keep an eye on player price changes, so not to lose out on those peksy £0.1m price changes, but thats' an aside.
As Jenninho proved, team value, is no reflection on overall ranking.
I think managers that do well, may (or may not) have a decent team value due to the fact that they have picked the best players - simple as
Having said that the 'crack the code' thread is indispensable for not getting caught out when buying or selling a player when a price rise or fall might mess up you next transfer.

Finally, I'm not sure I have the handle on this, but think it a great FPL debating point..
discuss...

Yep... that would have been rather impressive

Here's my history...

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/M/entryhist.mc?id=38


www link now updated...

While not ignoring the rest of your post - this is the salient(sp?) point.

I don't understand the playing the markets view - that's not the point of the game.

If you have to use your wildcard early then fair enough - but I don't see the point in planning to - just doesn't make sense to me.

Why would you want to pick one squad for the first 4 weeks, say, and then change it using your wildcard. If you're really lucky it might pay off - but it doesn't strike me as much of a plan.

Pick a well balanced squad - use your free weekly transfer to tweak it - and use your WC to either take advantage of unforeseen fixture changes/ dbl-GWs towards the tail end of season/bad luck with injuries & suspensions.

I played mine in GW34 last year and anticipate doing roughly the same again if I can.