After 11 years of playing ‘Sun dream team’ (see my #2 blog https://keysersozefantasyfootball.sport.blog/2021/04/27/blog-2-transition-from-casual-to-serious-player/ I began to play other game formats in 2018
There were quite a few reasons for this, alot of the articles on Twitter I was reading were focused on FPL or Sky. I was enjoying moderate success in the Sun’s game (few thousand in prize money) alot of the top players I interacted with were also playing in different formats (the FB group I’m in also had a good league combining scores across the different formats) so I wanted to challenge myself further. One of my best friends also had quit the sun’s game many years ago, and was now a big fan of FPL so I wanted to challenge him, and I felt a lot of my friends saw FPL as the better, more complete game.
I think back to some of the dark days of ‘dream team’ trying to defend a dodgy reporters ‘man of the match’ or algorithm to my mini league players. On top of these things I saw more formats as a chance to try and win more cash leagues.
My first season in FPL couldn’t have gone much better, and I ended with a rank of 10,335. Sadly I didn’t enter cash leagues in this season, and wanted to use it to learn the game, also to see if I could adapt to playing different formats at the same time. It was nice to win my local friends though (and this year we now have a cash league set up) Admittedly after this first year I thought the game was pretty easy and I had cracked it, I didn’t understand all the fuss of a top 10k rank, as in ‘Sun dream team’ I was now inside the top few hundred and in the World Cup edition even had a few teams inside the top 50. I quickly came crashing back down to earth in my 2nd FPL season and finished 284k, losing to a few of my casual mates in the process. I’m pleased to say I have just set a new PB coming 1,594th in my 3rd season.
I think that’s one of the main differences between ‘dream team’ and ‘FPL’ in that a decent player in DT through having access to entering 10 teams, you would always expect to find them inside the top 1k, whereas in FPL due to the wider player pool and massive captain score differences, a good player could easier find themselves outside the top 500k. Yes 8 million enter throughout the season, but recently 53% were inactive (no transfers for 5 weeks) and yet decent players still find themselves struggling, I guess the bench also helps the inactive teams.
I certainly regret not entering FPL sooner, I think the bench and all the chips initially put me off. I also didn’t use to follow the teams not in Europe that closely due to this being key to the ‘dream team’ format. I really enjoyed FPL this year and achieved a great season in prize money (which I will update on in my next blog)
As for other formats, I have started playing telegraph, Sky and fanteam in the past couple of years. I will start providing regular updates on my Twitter next season on these, as due to a personal issue, had to reduce my focus on these in December and missed a few weeks so I’m only having an average year on these although am in profit still on fanteam. Sky is the game I still struggle with the most. I find it’s format of having all your transfers in hand (same as telegraph) hard and would rather have a deadline to use them by. I’m also still getting to grips with the 3-1’s. Planning the captaincy days isn’t an issue for me, I also need to understand sky’s bonus point system more too.
I like the way each game has their own features, of course certain things are frustrating but I enjoy them all in different ways. I also love the way usually if you don’t own a player in one format you usually hold him in at least one other so it doesn’t totally ruin your weekend if they score a hatrick. At times it feels like managing my teams are a full time job especially the games with transfers between games, I was managing 19 teams at the start of the season and that didn’t include the champions league games to come on fanteam. Despite the stress of the recent season, I’m preparing to put myself through it all again this summer across 4 formats and multiple teams for the euro’s.
Once again thanks for reading, feel free to share you experiences on playing multiple formats of fantasy at the same time, and which game is your favourite. Next time I will discuss cash leagues, and some of the recent successes I have had in them
Keysersoze fantasy football 