Price Changes

[djskope]

Many thanks for the responses - however they still do not explain the humongous difference in range i.e. 82% and 1,026%

Are there any maths whizzes out there who have a made a fair comparison of the accuracy of these 3 sites (perhaps for last season and this season)...

Fplstatistics.co.uk / CTC / Fantasy Football Fix

In the specific case of Pedro, it's clear that Fplstatistics are the nearest to 100% at the moment.

Of course, all of these sites are very good but it w.r.t. general price changes, it would be great to know which to take more notice of..

[Stemania]

Throughout the season so far I think we'd mostly rate them FPLS ≥ FFFix > CTC (CTC has certainly been at least a factor of two out at all times and by far the worst). It was looking like the sites had got a much better handle in GW2 when the predicted rises (from FPLS in particular) were pretty close to spot on. But the last couple of weeks even they have struggled a bit (almost certainly due to all the wildcards being played).

I think one of the problems we have with the sites atm is a lack of knowledge of the inner workings. With FPLS for example, they readjust all totals every morning to take into account what they got wrong - but with say Pedro, we're at the moment seeing him dropped to around 80% every morning and he reaches about 100% again every evening. Without word from nigel it's unclear whether this drop is either due to an adjustment in the assumed wildard-transfer-to-regulation-transfer ratio for Pedro, the addition of the assumption that the protected was left on for an extra day, or some other factor. I think CTC for example just leaves the percentage to continue rising without taking 'unusual' factors' into account (did they even include his known protection period? - I didn't watch) - hence why he's so high on there. It could even be as simple as FPL just forgot to remove his protection, who knows?

I'd expect them all to be much more accurate in a few weeks time when the big wildcard surge is over. For now, we probably just have to live with it.

[Curmudgeon]

FPLS News

Update 2nd September 2015

Starting to suspect that Pedro's lock has not been removed. The unlock date for Pedro was very close to the international break (when all locks are usually extended). Clearly wild cards could well be impacting Pedro's transfers. Treat Pedro's potential to rise with care!!!

I would have thought it likely that FPL are making up their rules as they go along, to "encourage" interest.

Although of course you can never disregard the possibility of the most common explanation: incompetence***.

(Not by FPLS)

*** Ignorance and malice come a close second and third as explanations for most things.

[Stemania]

FPLS News

Update 2nd September 2015

Starting to suspect that Pedro's lock has not been removed. The unlock date for Pedro was very close to the international break (when all locks are usually extended). Clearly wild cards could well be impacting Pedro's transfers. Treat Pedro's potential to rise with care!!!

Good spot, useful message. Similar to what FFFix were suggesting the other day.

(for some reason I can only get to mobile view on FPLS atm )

[Stemania]

I think [FFFix] and CTC are roughly a factor of two out on most price rises at best. FPLS have Pedro at 97% and have been the only accurate predictors so far.

Completely wrong.

Just to not mislead, I do think I may have done a disservice to FFFix here as ajm suggested - having looked a bit closer and at a lot of data it seems FFFix has become much more accurate than last time I checked, insofar as they now give some pretty reasonable numbers. I apologise for that, a lazy post. They're probably then not too far behind FPLS atm imo, but both are struggling slightly with the wildcard fest it seems. Though both have the same intuition about Pedro.

Unfortunately, I have not done a disservice to CTC though.

[Curmudgeon]

CTC seems to have given up on Pedro!

Or is the display not capable of showing rise probabilities of over 1000%?

[sparx14]

Presumably as the game goes on more and more teams become inactive. Does this result in fewer price changes later in the season due to less transfers, or does this not have much impact? Have FPL ever changed thresholds during the season to account for this?

[ajm]

Presumably as the game goes on more and more teams become inactive. Does this result in fewer price changes later in the season due to less transfers, or does this not have much impact? Have FPL ever changed thresholds during the season to account for this?

Yes, this is what is done. The thresholds are changed roughly in proportion to the number of active teams

[sparx14]

Thanks ajm

[djskope]

Thanks guys.. very frustrated as it now looks like I took a (needless) -4 to rush him in and I suspect his price would have possibly gone up by 0.2 or even 0.3 this week.

I don't think it's the number of wildcards being played - other recent price rise and fall predictions might be out by, say, 1% - 15% but not out by over 200% or 1000%!

So to me, FPL forgetting to remove the lock seems like the most plausible explanation - a huge faux pas if this is the case.

Can anybody point me to an effective line of communication inside FPL to ask what exactly is going on?

[Curmudgeon]

You can send them a message using the form at the bottom of the page: http://fantasy.premierleague.com/rules/

I did that to point out the results of a bug in their initial team value calculations in the first couple of weeks of this season, and received a completely irrelevant reply from plfpl@mail.fantasy.premierleague.com

Best of luck in getting a coherent response

[djskope]

Thanks Curmudgeon - I have submitted this query via the form and will let you know the response.

Cheers!

[djskope]

I received a cryptic reply from FPL - still none the wiser and Pedro's still stuck at 9.5 (Friday)..

--------------------------------

From: Fantasy Support [mailto:plfpl@mail.fantasy.premierleague.com]
Sent: 04 September 2015 12:31
To:
Subject: Re: Pedro - still no price rise?

Hi ____,
Player prices can change daily during the season dependent on the popularity of the player in the transfer market. This formula will not be revealed to game players.
The price shown on your transfers page is a player's selling price. This selling price may be less than the player's current purchase price as a sell-on fee of 50% (rounded up to the nearest £0.1m) will be applied on any profits made on that player.
For example, if you buy a player for £8.3m and when you transfer him his price is £9.0m, his selling price will be £8.6m.
To see the purchase price, selling price and current price of all of your players go to the "Transfers" tab and select the "Data View" option.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Fantasy Premier League Support

[Curmudgeon]

Yeah, I got something similar when I wasn't asking about how they calculate buying and selling prices. They obviously have an AI system which selects standard response paragraphs by identifying keywords in the question.

[AI = Artificial Idiocy]

[Pirlo's Beard]

[AI = Artificial Idiocy]

Very real idiocy, I'm afraid. Nothing artificial about it.

[nigeljdean]

FPLS News

Update 2nd September 2015

Starting to suspect that Pedro's lock has not been removed. The unlock date for Pedro was very close to the international break (when all locks are usually extended). Clearly wild cards could well be impacting Pedro's transfers. Treat Pedro's potential to rise with care!!!

Good spot, useful message. Similar to what FFFix were suggesting the other day.

(for some reason I can only get to mobile view on FPLS atm )

Hi, Is the non mobile view OK now. I haven't had any problems for over a week now (since I was forced to get my own server). If OK now I suspect I was updating a dll on the site.

[Stemania]

[
(for some reason I can only get to mobile view on FPLS atm )

Hi, Is the non mobile view OK now. I haven't had any problems for over a week now (since I was forced to get my own server). If OK now I suspect I was updating a dll on the site.

Unfortunately, at the moment I still get the mobile site only on both PC and mobile with 'request desktop site' ticked. It could just be my rubbishy old devices though - anyone else got the same?

[nigeljdean]

[
(for some reason I can only get to mobile view on FPLS atm )

Hi, Is the non mobile view OK now. I haven't had any problems for over a week now (since I was forced to get my own server). If OK now I suspect I was updating a dll on the site.

Unfortunately, at the moment I still get the mobile site only on both PC and mobile with 'request desktop site' ticked. It could just be my rubbishy old devices though - anyone else got the same?

It would only give you a mobile view if:
1. You are forcing the window size to be quite small (any operating system). The system would then decide that you can't see all the information and the responsive algorithms would then kick in.
2. The system cannot recognise your browser correctly (but that wouldn't be likely if it worked previously.
3. Something else that I can't think of (or I have mistakenly coded in)

[PleasedToMichu]

[
(for some reason I can only get to mobile view on FPLS atm )

Hi, Is the non mobile view OK now. I haven't had any problems for over a week now (since I was forced to get my own server). If OK now I suspect I was updating a dll on the site.

Unfortunately, at the moment I still get the mobile site only on both PC and mobile with 'request desktop site' ticked. It could just be my rubbishy old devices though - anyone else got the same?

Try delete cache from browser

[Stemania]

Works now. Cheers.

[gallus]

I think it's obvious they forgot to lift his protection. He went from 6% ownership to 14% with no rise.

[djskope]

Grrr.. because of their balls-up I either want my 2 GW transfers cancelled so I get my -4 back. Or a fair and instant 0.3 rise

Does anybody know anybody human who works inside FPL?

If so can they have a word??

[Monsignor]

Maybe they didn't forget. Couldn't it be that they extended it until the next round because they don't want his price to skyrocket immediately with the early influx of buyers? Seems more likely than FPL forgetting about such an important player.

[Sutter Kane]

Maybe they didn't forget. Couldn't it be that they extended it until the next round because they don't want his price to skyrocket immediately with the early influx of buyers? Seems more likely than FPL forgetting about such an important player.

Of course this is possible but why him and not anyone else, ever? It would seem a little weird also if they decide to have one price change rule for one player and the usual rules for everyone else. It is quite irritating really as if he posts another decent score against Everton many people who haven't bought him yet will be able to still get him relatively cheap along with the people who've planned to get him anyway next GW. Another implication is that there's bound to be many an owner who will be 0.1mn short of a player/squad they want later on in the season because Pedro didn't rise this GW.

Having said all that, it's one of those FPL Towers 'situations' where we can just say the game is free, they make mistakes, many things inexplicably happen throughout the season like this (mostly revolving around awards of assists... ) and this is just 1 of 50 so doesn't really impact that much.

As for Pedro himself, I think he's made a decent enough start to warrant inclusion in an FPL squad.

[Mav3rick]

It would not surprise me if certain players were held back deliberately as its another way they can dumb the game down.

Having said that, I'd have expected any dumbing down rules to apply to Aguero and he went up roughly when predicted.

[The Dazzler]

FPL wants the price rise mechanism to be uncrackable. The sites wish to crack it.
Tweaking the system every year merely slows down the sites as they obtain more and more observable information.

So what do FPL Towers do?
I would imagine they would introduce some sort of random element that simply can't be predicted with 100% accuracy?
So in the case of player protection, it could be that they have a completely random number generator for when the protection would be lifted. Anywhere from (for example) 7-14 days.
This could explain the Pedro situation?
I have no progamming knowledge so I've no idea if that is plausible or not. But it seems more plausible (to me) than they just held Pedro back deliberately.

[Stemania]

FPL wants the price rise mechanism to be uncrackable. The sites wish to crack it.
Tweaking the system every year merely slows down the sites as they obtain more and more observable information.

So what do FPL Towers do?
I would imagine they would introduce some sort of random element that simply can't be predicted with 100% accuracy?
So in the case of player protection, it could be that they have a completely random number generator for when the protection would be lifted. Anywhere from (for example) 7-14 days.
This could explain the Pedro situation?
I have no progamming knowledge so I've no idea if that is plausible or not. But it seems more plausible (to me) than they just held Pedro back deliberately.

I very much doubt they'd include any sort of randomness in their running of the game. Either a slight change of the protection rules for this season or simply a mistake seem far more likely explanations to me.

[Finisher1]

In their rules FPL towers tell us specifically that

A) "Player prices change during the season dependent on the popularity of the player in the transfer market."
B) "During the season, your fantasy football players will be allocated points based on their performance in the Barclays Premier League."

However, after B they provide us with the explicit point allocation table, whereas after A they don't provide us any further information. I think this is totally irrational, isn't it?

I hope that next season we will have a hidden formula for point allocation also.

[djskope]

This random price-sticking makes a mockery of what I thought was supposed to be a skill based game.. he was added on the 20 August, has been transferred in half a million times in the 3 weeks since then - and still no price change! Rubbish.

[Monsignor]

In their rules FPL towers tell us specifically that

A) "Player prices change during the season dependent on the popularity of the player in the transfer market."
B) "During the season, your fantasy football players will be allocated points based on their performance in the Barclays Premier League."

However, after B they provide us with the explicit point allocation table, whereas after A they don't provide us any further information. I think this is totally irrational, isn't it?

I hope that next season we will have a hidden formula for point allocation also.

Well, no - not if they're trying to discourage managers from manipulating the price system in favor of managers who select their teams based on who they think will perform in upcoming rounds.