Discussion around good; very good or genius FPL players

[Valeron]

Ville at 28k and just 2 others in the elite list in the top 100k. Even with the DGWs and chips in hand, some of these guys could be looking at their worst ever finish by a long way.
Ville benched Mahrez this weekend for his haul, which backs up my belief it was the right call for most people. This season has been a freak in my opinion, 25 weeks in and all over the place mug players are still ahead of the smart ones.

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

[Curmudgeon]

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

https://fpldiscovery.wordpress.com/ says that of the Top 10K, 46% have used their Triple Captain chip, and 60% their Bench Boost, which are the critical points enhancers.

Which gives a certain amount of optimism to those of us who are still holding fire, and might derive extra benefit from using them in the DGWs which are certain to occur.

[matmutte]

Ville at 28k and just 2 others in the elite list in the top 100k. Even with the DGWs and chips in hand, some of these guys could be looking at their worst ever finish by a long way.
Ville benched Mahrez this weekend for his haul, which backs up my belief it was the right call for most people. This season has been a freak in my opinion, 25 weeks in and all over the place mug players are still ahead of the smart ones.

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

thanks for the update. To be honest though, i don't know how you can bench a player like Mahrez, thats a rather poor call if you ask me, quite reassuring that the greatest players can make bad calls like that

[Finisher1]

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

https://fpldiscovery.wordpress.com/ says that of the Top 10K, 46% have used their Triple Captain chip, and 60% their Bench Boost, which are the critical points enhancers.

Which gives a certain amount of optimism to those of us who are still holding fire, and might derive extra benefit from using them in the DGWs which are certain to occur.

I think Triple Captain includes a huge lucky factor, so it's not certain how valuable it will be. But I'm quite confident Wildcard + Bench Boost combo will give us an explosive return.

[Valeron]

Ville at 28k and just 2 others in the elite list in the top 100k. Even with the DGWs and chips in hand, some of these guys could be looking at their worst ever finish by a long way.
Ville benched Mahrez this weekend for his haul, which backs up my belief it was the right call for most people. This season has been a freak in my opinion, 25 weeks in and all over the place mug players are still ahead of the smart ones.

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

thanks for the update. To be honest though, i don't know how you can bench a player like Mahrez, thats a rather poor call if you ask me, quite reassuring that the greatest players can make bad calls like that

It's pretty simple really, if Mahrez had the lowest points expectation of his front 8 players then benching him was the right decision. This was another case in this freak season of the weaker players getting 1 over the stronger players, as for many good players Mahrez will have been the weakest of their front 8 options in the game week and subsuquebtly benched.

[liquidfootball2]

Ville at 28k and just 2 others in the elite list in the top 100k. Even with the DGWs and chips in hand, some of these guys could be looking at their worst ever finish by a long way.
Ville benched Mahrez this weekend for his haul, which backs up my belief it was the right call for most people. This season has been a freak in my opinion, 25 weeks in and all over the place mug players are still ahead of the smart ones.

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

thanks for the update. To be honest though, i don't know how you can bench a player like Mahrez, thats a rather poor call if you ask me, quite reassuring that the greatest players can make bad calls like that

It's pretty simple really, if Mahrez had the lowest points expectation of his front 8 players then benching him was the right decision. This was another case in this freak season of the weaker players getting 1 over the stronger players, as for many good players Mahrez will have been the weakest of their front 8 options in the game week and subsuquebtly benched.

Yes Valeron I agree, there is no way i could criticise anyone for such a benching decision considering the options available to him. Ville has a very strong front eight and only Payet or possibly Alli, if he thought he might not play, looked a possible alternative. The vast majority will have played Alli, and Payet was at least as good an option to play as Mahrez (without hindsight). He already was playing Vardy which for me would have made Mahrez a logical benchman. Before the game, not too many wanted two Leicester attackers away at City.

I got lucky played Mahrez and benched Payet (having Lukaku and not Vardy) but agonized over it and recognize it as lucky.

[Aldershot Rejects]

Ville at 28k and just 2 others in the elite list in the top 100k. Even with the DGWs and chips in hand, some of these guys could be looking at their worst ever finish by a long way.
Ville benched Mahrez this weekend for his haul, which backs up my belief it was the right call for most people. This season has been a freak in my opinion, 25 weeks in and all over the place mug players are still ahead of the smart ones.

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

thanks for the update. To be honest though, i don't know how you can bench a player like Mahrez, thats a rather poor call if you ask me, quite reassuring that the greatest players can make bad calls like that

It's pretty simple really, if Mahrez had the lowest points expectation of his front 8 players then benching him was the right decision. This was another case in this freak season of the weaker players getting 1 over the stronger players, as for many good players Mahrez will have been the weakest of their front 8 options in the game week and subsuquebtly benched.

Yes Valeron I agree, there is no way i could criticise anyone for such a benching decision considering the options available to him. Ville has a very strong front eight and only Payet or possibly Alli, if he thought he might not play, looked a possible alternative. The vast majority will have played Alli, and Payet was at least as good an option to play as Mahrez (without hindsight). He already was playing Vardy which for me would have made Mahrez a logical benchman. Before the game, not too many wanted two Leicester attackers away at City.

I got lucky played Mahrez and benched Payet (having Lukaku and not Vardy) but agonized over it and recognize it as lucky.

I agree in part - I'm not going to criticise anyone for their benching decisions (particularly having been called borderline insane on another forum for not having Alli in my squad).

Having said that Mahrez is the lynchpin of the team that is top of the table and is comfortably outscoring every other player in the game and had scored 12 points in the previous 2 games. No one with Aguero in their squad would bench him unless he was injured or suspended. For me it's back to the fact that everyone (me included) has failed to take Leicester seriously enough.

[gallus]

I got lucky played Mahrez and benched Payet (having Lukaku and not Vardy) but agonized over it and recognize it as lucky.

It was a good call. Mahrez is more dangerous than Payet and Soton's defence is better than City's

[Sutter Kane]

For me it's back to the fact that everyone (me included) has failed to take Leicester seriously enough.

This is definitely correct and would have been one of the reasons why Mahrez was benched (or perhaps temporarily dumped as in my case!). However I also understand the points expectation argument (which leads us back to the age old; need a base price playing mid to sit benched permanently then this would never happen) It's been a strange season, one can only try and predict - no-one could predict Leicester to score 3 at Man C simply because rightly or wrongly few recognise the massive attacking threat Leicester poses away from home to any/every team. They are now favourites so perhaps the unthinkable is becoming very much thinkable, despite their comparatively ridiculous small squad size. Even when Arsenal destroyed them in September (27 shots), Leicester still scored twice (16 shots). Leicester away seem a different animal though...

Mahrez was averaging 7ppg approx. Away at Man C would have reduced this expectation ppg to equal or below everyone else in that front 8. He could have played Mahrez instead of Vardy though...I don't think Ville has been unlucky by any stretch this season, he's had more than his fair share of breaks imo so this may be a little payback.

[Finisher1]

I think MCI is a good fixture for good teams. It's not a hindsight anymore, City has been a terrible defence for the whole season except those short spells with Kompany.

I'm happy to play Kane in GW26 for MCI (A). I think it's a delicious fixture.

[Sutter Kane]

Who is the favourite for Man C - Spurs then? If you believe it's a delicious fixture for Spurs, then I wonder whether you will make Aguero (c) thinking it's a high scoring game or whether you expect a Spurs win and will captain elsewhere. I was about to play Stanislas ahead of Alli, maybe I'm mistaken...

[Finisher1]

I will captain Costa (NEW).

[Beerfuelledman]

I'd like to think that Mahrez display against City is an indicator that they are far from infallible. Deli Alli has shown very recently what he has in his armoury, Id be choosing that every time over Stanislas personally.

[mmikkeelee]

Demichelis and otimendi are truly awful defenders and Kane (c) could be a great idea

[matmutte]

Ville at 28k and just 2 others in the elite list in the top 100k. Even with the DGWs and chips in hand, some of these guys could be looking at their worst ever finish by a long way.
Ville benched Mahrez this weekend for his haul, which backs up my belief it was the right call for most people. This season has been a freak in my opinion, 25 weeks in and all over the place mug players are still ahead of the smart ones.

Does anyone have figures on how many of the top 20k have used their chips?

thanks for the update. To be honest though, i don't know how you can bench a player like Mahrez, thats a rather poor call if you ask me, quite reassuring that the greatest players can make bad calls like that

It's pretty simple really, if Mahrez had the lowest points expectation of his front 8 players then benching him was the right decision. This was another case in this freak season of the weaker players getting 1 over the stronger players, as for many good players Mahrez will have been the weakest of their front 8 options in the game week and subsuquebtly benched.

How can any of Payet, Firmino, Alli and even Ozil be considered being a better point prospect than Mahrez who's mile ahead of any league player FPL wise (as well as in real life), and who showed he can score against any defence. With all due respect, benching Mahrez must be the worst call you can make in the game right now and i can't understand that. And that is from someone who captained Depay in GW3

[wahine]

yeah I have been stalking someone named Marlen who's quite a good past record, he started extremely badly and has made some brilliant moves up the rankings, however he's made plenty of bad calls too, as have a number of the better players, and i noticed a few of them just following the "herd" trying to stay in touch.

[dino1980]

Likely been mentioned elsewhere but Mahrez has 14 goals & 10 assists. That equals Hazard's output for last season (and the one before that actually).

No one would've benched Hazard in any game last season.

I get that Leicester are likely to create less shots per game than a dominate Chelsea were last season but still.

[Paul_Football]

Surely you can't be considered an FPL Genius if you've never actually won it? This Ville guy hasn't even gotten in the top 50 in 7 years playing the game.
That's like saying Arsene Wenger is a genius for getting 4th place every year, not having it. His missus must love him because he never finishes first.

[PleasedToMichu]

Surely you can't be considered an FPL Genius if you've never actually won it? This Ville guy hasn't even gotten in the top 50 in 7 years playing the game.
That's like saying Arsene Wenger is a genius for getting 4th place every year, not having it. His missus must love him because he never finishes first.

Thats a bit harsh, isn't it? Dont have the actuall numbers in front of me, but i dont think i'm way off when i'm saying that there's been over 3m players over the past years, and Ville have managed to get in top 5k all years his account have been active. Thats in my book the definition of a FPL-genius. With over 3m teams to start with, some randoms are bound to hit the jackpot, Ville does however always fight right at the top, every year.

A bit of luck in the blank/DGW i'm sure he could win it.

[danzku]

Surely you can't be considered an FPL Genius if you've never actually won it? This Ville guy hasn't even gotten in the top 50 in 7 years playing the game.
That's like saying Arsene Wenger is a genius for getting 4th place every year, not having it. His missus must love him because he never finishes first.

Thats a bit harsh, isn't it? Dont have the actuall numbers in front of me, but i dont think i'm way off when i'm saying that there's been over 3m players over the past years, and Ville have managed to get in top 5k all years his account have been active. Thats in my book the definition of a FPL-genius. With over 3m teams to start with, some randoms are bound to hit the jackpot, Ville does however always fight right at the top, every year.

A bit of luck in the blank/DGW i'm sure he could win it.

Even if the best FPL player ever would try to win it and play every year for all his life the odds would be against him because of the luck factor/player mass. It's like poker, Phil Ivey is regarded as the best player in the game but has never won the WSOP Main Event probably because of the same reason.

[liquidfootball2]

Surely you can't be considered an FPL Genius if you've never actually won it? This Ville guy hasn't even gotten in the top 50 in 7 years playing the game.
That's like saying Arsene Wenger is a genius for getting 4th place every year, not having it. His missus must love him because he never finishes first.

Agree with the others though about Ville being the best or extremely near to it. It's possible to win FPL and be nowhere near the player Ville is.

[Paul_Football]

Sorry guys that was meant tongue in cheek. I guess the tone of my message didnt read as a joke. It's actually a pretty remarkable fpl record.

[triggerlips]

Ville was probably right to bench Mahrez with the information available at the time. I would have done the same, indeed i did bench him in the ultimate variation of the game.

As for whether someone can be a genius and not win it. With 4 million players all having the same information the best player would only be expected to win it quite rarely.
Remember 38 Gameweeks is a very small amount of time for all the luck factors to even out.
Ronke has done remarkably well to stay at the top as long as as he has. Once he slips off the top it could be that no one else manages to stay at the top as long.

Their are two factors which suggest it is now going to be much harder for the best players to dominate

1) the chips add a further element of luck, this means. it will take more gameweeks for thst luck to even out. Way more than 38 which i already said is very small sample anyway

2) Far more quality information available now. The scout even have a colomn in the actual game, while there are a few decent blogs and player sites springing up. On top of this there are more players. A top 1000 finish now is i suspect far harder to achieve than in the past. I think i have four of them from memory, and would not be surprised if never have another one, especially as the game heads off in a more random direction

In games that contain an element of chance like Poker , it takes hundreds if not thousands of hands before you can evaluate a players true skill 38 gameweeks is a tiny sample, and provides only a small indication of a players skill. So to win one season has to involve quite a substantial amount of luck, where as to stay up the top for as long as Ronke has requires a higher ellement of skill.

[Calvin1979]

Sorry guys that was meant tongue in cheek. I guess the tone of my message didnt read as a joke. It's actually a pretty remarkable fpl record.

I read that as tongue in cheek but to be fair he can't be that good as he hasn't owned ZiDann all season

In all honesty Ville's year in year out performance in FPL is phenomenal. The guy is a machine, Kudos.

[Paul_Football]

Sorry guys that was meant tongue in cheek. I guess the tone of my message didnt read as a joke. It's actually a pretty remarkable fpl record.

I read that as tongue in cheek but to be fair he can't be that good as he hasn't owned ZiDann all season

In all honesty Ville's year in year out performance in FPL is phenomenal. The guy is a machine, Kudos.

you said it! ziDann is the difference between dullsVille and boVill http://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/ ... istory/25/

[The Dazzler]

Ville was probably right to bench Mahrez with the information available at the time. I would have done the same, indeed i did bench him in the ultimate variation of the game.

As for whether someone can be a genius and not win it. With 4 million players all having the same information the best player would only be expected to win it quite rarely.
Remember 38 Gameweeks is a very small amount of time for all the luck factors to even out.
Ronke has done remarkably well to stay at the top as long as as he has. Once he slips off the top it could be that no one else manages to stay at the top as long.

Their are two factors which suggest it is now going to be much harder for the best players to dominate

1) the chips add a further element of luck, this means. it will take more gameweeks for thst luck to even out. Way more than 38 which i already said is very small sample anyway

2) Far more quality information available now. The scout even have a colomn in the actual game, while there are a few decent blogs and player sites springing up. On top of this there are more players. A top 1000 finish now is i suspect far harder to achieve than in the past. I think i have four of them from memory, and would not be surprised if never have another one, especially as the game heads off in a more random direction

In games that contain an element of chance like Poker , it takes hundreds if not thousands of hands before you can evaluate a players true skill 38 gameweeks is a tiny sample, and provides only a small indication of a players skill. So to win one season has to involve quite a substantial amount of luck, where as to stay up the top for as long as Ronke has requires a higher ellement of skill.

Ville possibly was correct in benching Mahrez with the team that he had. But perhaps the bigger question is, was he correct in having the team that he had?
It's a question I'm going to attempt to address in the Ville thread if anyone is interested.

I would say most of the winners of the game are not very good players. Spiderm4tt is an exception and is a very good player who can talk intelligently about the game. But if the guy who finished 2nd the year Spider won it, had not benched hat trick scoring Lukaku on the final weekend, Spiderm4tt would have finished 2nd. Would he still be as good a player? Of course but he wouldn't have won the game.
Stating winners are geniuses and anyone not winning (even top 10 finishers) aren't, is clearly an example of someone not understanding the nuances and subtleties of the game. There is nothing between the top 50 every season except a bit of luck.
On good FPL managers struggling, I don't think the chips are that significant. Sure they introduce a new element of luck, which increases variance but their impact is small, points wise.
By far the biggest impact is FFS levelling the playing field. This factor makes everything else pale in comparison.
There was an article on FFS last year by some Aussie guy who had finished in the top 1K without ever having watched a football match in his life. He just used all the stats on FFS.
Similarly, last years champion barely watched a match all season. Previously you needed an understanding of football combined with a knowledge of how the FPL game works. Now you need neither of those things. You can just copy it off the board.
If you have 10,000 people copying these 'top tips' and are playing somewhat correctly (without actually knowing what they are doing or why) then it greatly diminishes the edge really skilled managers have. Whereas before very skilled managers might have had an edge of +5pts per week over the average player, that might be down to +2pts (or less) per week.

[MoSe]

....Ville have managed to get in top 5k all years his account have been active. Thats in my book the definition of a FPL-genius....

Agree with the others though about Ville being the best or extremely near to it. It's possible to win FPL and be nowhere near the player Ville is.

It's actually a pretty remarkable fpl record.

...Ronke has done remarkably well to stay at the top as long as as he has....
...to stay up the top for as long as Ronke has requires a higher ellement of skill.

...In all honesty Ville's year in year out performance in FPL is phenomenal...

I see the same discussion as last season has come up again

so forgive me if I insist, nothing has made me change my stance, and I report it here again
see this post viewtopic.php?p=2696316#p2696316 and the one above it
here's the updated graph too

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/1262132/history/
http://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/648070/history/
http://fantasy.premierleague.com/entry/22442/history/
El Tel of Ealing 07 - 12 performances were better and more regular than Ville's 09 -13 ones
the same if we only consider the four 09 - 12 seasons were they both played and performed at the top
(for briefness I identify a season with the year it ends, when you get its results, e.g. 2013/14 is the 14 season)

I repeat, I'm not dissing Ville
I only point out that imho there are others at his same skill level
maybe they don't have Ville's same continuous level of commitment, which is impressive paired with his undoubted skills
only his last two seasons brought imho his overall performance over the rest of the field, before those he was one of the best but not the best

[Stemania]

MoSe, might it be worth you normalising graphs like that by the number of players each year (i think that info is on this thread somewhere) just to take that clear extra difficulty factor from population growth into account?

[MoSe]

not in the near future, lol

also, top 1k is 0.03% of 3 millions (not to mention top 100),
I wonder which scale should be adopted then, and doubt its immediate readability

furtherly,
while I agree that having 3M teams instead of 2M may change the worth of a 2-300k placement
I'm not sure it makes a 1500/3M finish as worth as a 1000/2M one
it's not obvious and straightforward to me that in the extra 1M you find the same distribution of skills as in the previous 2M
when you attract new millions of masses, it's easier that you attract in proportion a greater % of new casuals than of new skilled players. Imho, off-the-top...

finally, as I posted in the page where my linked post is, I guess the number of teams at the Start of the season has more impact than those at the end, for the purpose of weighing a rank worth, especially when considering top ranks

in summary, lotsa considerations and work to do, can't be up to it now

[Stemania]

furtherly,
while I agree that having 3M teams instead of 2M may change the worth of a 2-300k placement
I'm not sure it makes a 1500/3M finish as worth as a 1000/2M one
it's not obvious and straightforward to me that in the extra 1M you find the same distribution of skills as in the previous 2M
when you attract new millions of masses, it's easier that you attract in proportion a greater % of new casuals than of new skilled players. Imho, off-the-top...

I'm not sure what the best assumption would be tbh - I'd still guess the most sensible would be to assume that there's the same proportion of 'serious' players every year - perhaps the proportion of the new player who will be in this 'casuals' catagory will be higher than the proportion in the population they are joining, causing dilution, but every year a good percentage of players will migrate from 'casual' to 'serious' or at least semi-serious. The proportion of 'serious' players in the population is probably very small already anyway. My guess is actually (as TD/trig mentioned above) that the growing abundance of information (FFS, other websites etc) means that a lot more new players come in as 'semi-casual/semi serious' than before - a group who don't really have the sickeningly geeky interest in the game that us lot do and would otherwise be disdainfully catagorised by us as 'casuals', but now do have all the same information we do at their fingertips - and who knows what that might be doing to the population, maybe even strengthening it on average? I'd be tempted to agree (in view also of trig and TDs posts above) that you could possibly even say there might be three reasonable catagories of player now (if catagorising players is your bag):

1) Casuals/the masses (which will still constitute the vast majority of the 3-4m players at the start - I don't know, 70-90% of players or something, maybe even more - some proportion over a half of whom won't even finish the season). A huge proportion of these will also only care about beating their friends/colleagues in minileagues rather than rank so might essentially stop if it is definitely won/lost too. Those that do keep playing all season probably don't put too much thought into it and generally end up transferring in the player(s) who've just scored points recently/good MOTD highlight player/new United signings ( ) when they do.

2) Semi-casuals/Semi-serious - or 'Empowered casuals' - those who keep playing all season but perfectly legitimately but don't spend much time on it - it's only a bloody game - but are aware of all the new info. They would previously perhaps have been catagorised as casuals. Maybe they only even look at their team every couple of weeks, maybe every week, maybe less, but when they do there's a good chance they'd have a quick look on these info sites - and with all this new information available at a click their decisions are likely much better on average than your regular casual. Who knows, perhaps there's anywhere from 50k to 250k of these? (Numbers pulled from an orifice, based on the very very rough estimate from another thread that the most popular site FFS might get around 50k visitors on an average weekend). These are probably the people trig/TD refer to and you could argue are the biggest driver of FPL final rank difficulty. This could have been, or is even likely to have been, the quickest growing of the three groups in recent years relatively speaking, hard to say.

3) The 'serious' - what we like to refer to ourselves as to distance us from the pig swilling, unclean, proletariat masses. Including the super-elite players like Ville, all avid FFS/FISO users and the stats nerds and basically anyone who really keep track of FPL every week and spend a reasonable amount of time on it - the vast majority of what we'd call 'serious' players are users of info sites nowadays I imagine. How many might there be, I've seen 20-30k guessed before, possibly less? Edit: this group has obviously strengthened significantly in recent years as info has become available - in fact, maybe this strengthening is really the difficulty driving group now. Edit: If you considered yourself a very good player in the past (likely you used to do all your own research etc and it got you results) then now that advantage has all but gone within the 'serious ranks' due to widespread info availability.

Obviously people are going to fall into a spectrum rather than three catagories and the distinction between all three is going to be very very very blurred, and the above is all incredibly wishy-washy, but maybe it does still represent the current thinking. Oh, and category 4) Ville.

(I've seen category 3 split into 'serious' and 'elite' before too - the top 100 or 1000 players or whatever - but it will be so small a group if you chose to do that that it doesn't add much heuristically. Edit: Perhaps what you could really say is that it's harder for the top end of the 'serious' players to swim to the top of that serious group every year now for the info reasons above - making Ville's record all the more impressive).