Chips Versus Bread & Butter Fantasy Management

It’s fair to say that the introduction of the three new Chips threw the cat amongst the pigeons at the launch of the Fantasy Premier League’s 2015/16 season. These offered Fantasy managers for the first time a second Wildcard to play any time after January, in addition to the chance to bench-boost substitutes into a Gameweek score, get triple points for a captain and play all out attack with a two-man defence.

Excited fantasies of 15 double Gameweek players and 60 or 70-point Aguero double Gameweek, triple captaincy scores then ensued as Fantasy managers dared to dream of breaking records with an all-time highest ever Gameweek score.  

Now that many of us are putting these Chips plans into action, it is beginning to dawn on some that perhaps they are not as exciting as first thought. Could these chips be overrated and come at the expense of the bread and butter of sensible Fantasy management?

To analyse this, lets have a look to see what the chips can realistically offer our teams.

A Balanced Points Diet

Prior to this season your FPL points total was made up of the following two distinct elements:

Player Selection (PS): The ability to use your FPL skills to aim to have the best scoring 11 possible in each Gameweek is key. This involves balancing big hitters, mid-price and cheap rotations as well as playing the fixtures and spotting players coming into form ahead of everyone else. Maximising defence and goalkeeper points by rotation planning is another facet of these foundations of consistent high ranks.

Captain Picks (CP): This is a slightly different “skill” and many would say where the largest element of luck is involved. While you can plan having big-hitter captain options in your team, at end of the day it is often the luck of the draw which of four or five options scores big, and which get the dreaded two pointer. Depending on the options in any given week, there will be times for a differential, and times (some would say most of the time) for going with the crowd. Getting armband selection right is the difference between success and failure.

So, prior to this season, your FPL points total was comprised of PS + CP, both elements being slightly but fundamentally different and both requiring a blend of defensive (high ownership) picks, as well as differentials to help boost your PS and CP elements ahead of the herd.

A good captain return would appear to be around 10% or more of your season points total. From a random sample of a number of players and rivals it ranges between 8% to 12.5% with anything over 12.5% being an exceptional run of good captain picks.

The current world number 1 and 2 both have returns of 11%, my own (with a Gameweek 32 OR of 125k) is 9% and I’d consider I’ve done quite poorly at picking my captains.

*Note this only refers to the additional points for the captaincy, not the baseline points for the captain which is part of the PS score.

So, in an average FPL season prior to this year a decent finish may involve 2,200 to 2,400 points (lets take 2,300 as an average ‘good’ season). You might expect your “PS” points to be somewhere around 2,000 to 2,100 and your “CP” to be 200 to 300.

Added Chips

Now let’s look at the chips.  Firstly, let’s disregard what is widely seen as the most insignificant chip, the All Out Attack, which at most changes the score of a defender for that of an attacker with a good fixture. Given that it’s your last choice attacker (the guy you would otherwise bench) I’m going to assume the average gain on this will be 8 to 10 points and really negligible in the scheme of things, so I’m going to take it that the gain from this chip is included in the PS element of your score.

That leaves Triple Captain (TC) and Bench Boost (BB). In 2015/16 the new formula for your overall FPL season total is:

Total = PS + CP + TC + BB.

Now if we isolate the gains made specifically from Chips, from the gains you would make anyway by having the right players (PS) and pick good/lucky captains (CP), how significantly do they contribute to your overall score / rank?

Triple Captain

This is possibly the most hyped chip. Aguero in a double Gamweek should get 80, 90, 100 captain points. Well, maybe not.
If you did captain Aguero that mythical double Gameweek and he scores 40 points, what did you actually gain from the chip (apart from seeing 120 beside the players name which admittedly is pretty cool)?

• You owned / played Aguero in your 11  – that’s 40 points for your TS element of score.
• You decided to give him the armband, that’s 40 points for the CP element of your score.
• You would have got those points anyway if this dream scenario happened last season.

What you actually gained from activating your TC chip that hypothetical week was ‘only’ 40 points.  And that’s from an unrealistic double hat-trick scenario, with a more realistic TC score being 20-25.

Then consider that everyone gets one TC shot, which can be played on any player, in any Gameweek of the season. For that reason, differentials or ownership don’t really come into play. Comparing your Gameweek score the week you play the TC to others’ scores that week who didn’t TC is misleading, even if potentially very satisfying.

Even if you did play it on the mega week and have a mammoth Gameweek points haul well over 100, and therefore leap up the rankings over the non-TC users that week, you need to wait until the season is over and compare what the rest of the pack got for their TC in whatever week they played it to see how it affected your final ranking.

The only thing that matters therefore is that in the equation above that your TC number is higher than everyone else, or at least higher than the average. Consider that “serious” players are more likely to use it in a double Gamweek (popular options at present are Romelu Lukaku in Gameweek 33, Alexis Sanchez in Gameweek 34 and Dimitri Payet in Gameweek 37), the variance or gain among these options is likely to be lower.

So in summary, a very good gain on rivals in mini leagues (or in terms of OR) might be 20 points (i.e. you got 20 points more in your TC score than most people, not counting the TS or CP points you would have got anyway).

20 points into the formula above, for good total points return of 2,300 points equates to less than 1% of your total points. Compared to 11 to 12% for good normal captain picks (CP) this is a very minimal impact. Many other decisions you make in the season regarding player selection (TS) – for example I benched Mahrez for his hat trick – or narrow captaincy calls (CP) going wrong will cost you way more than 20 points and are therefore way more important.

Bench Boost

Bench Boost, simply put, gives you an additional four players’ weekly score to add to your season total. Again everyone gets one and only one, so again comparing the week you play your BB to everyone else who doesn’t BB is misleading. You need to see what the total score of the four extra players was in your BB week, versus everyone else’s BB week.

Lets look at potential gains from a well played BB. Assuming you play it in a double Gamweek with a squad packed with double players you are likely to get four players extra with two matches each. As these are the players you would otherwise bench it won’t be the big hitters scores we are counting here.  Lets say on a good outcome your four players average 4 ppg.  Your BB extra score would then be 4 x 4 x 2 = 32 points.

Consider that even if somebody averaged 1.5 ppg from their four extra players they would get an extra BB number of 12 then we are again looking at a likely relative gain on the rest of the FPL world of around 20 points.  Probably less if you are competing with serious players who will pick good double Gameweek options or maybe play in a single Gameweek where they have a very good bench.

So again, the likely anticipated BB gain could be less than 1% of your total score.

Our Season Points Total Formula using the numbers given as examples above would be:

Total of 2,362 = 2,050 (PS) + 250 (CP) + 30 (TC) + 32 (BB)

or

100% = 86.8% (PS) + 10.5% (CP) + 1.3% (TC) + 1.4% (BB)

Take into account that the average score or score of your direct rivals for BB and TC will probably not be zero and what is actually gained from them is even more minimal compared to the good old fashioned Bread and Butter of having a good squad and picking good captains.

Conclusion

So what was all the fuss with chips about? While getting an extra 50 or 60 points via these chips is a help, it appears there has since their announcement been an over-emphasis on how important they will be. The fact that playing a chip in a week when others do not can hugely inflate that Gameweek score and rank. But as outlined above, the majority of that big Gameweek score came from your bread and butter team selection and captain choice. The chips give a small and not insignificant top-up, but don’t forget everyone else will get a top-up too some other Gameweek so you have to consider the chip returns in isolation to get a true picture of their value.

Of course a 1 or 2% points gain on a rival is not to be sniffed at, and could be crucial in closing out a mini league, but it seems that the debate and effort put into the BB and TC chips is disproportional given the mainstay of success (97% of your points in fact) being the FPL Bread and Butter of team selection, tactics and captain choice.

Acknowledgements – The notions put forward in this article arose from discussions on the home of Irish FPL fanatics