In poker, bad beat is a subjective term for a hand in which a player with what appears to be strong cards nevertheless loses.
Autopsy
Only 1 of my 5 defenders played this week and he came off injured for 0 points.
And last week I played Martinez (1) benched Areola (10), this week I benched Martinez (10) played Areola (1).
I also benched Bamford after his recent barren spell, and of course he shone.
Kane injured both of his ankles against Liverpool last week, I had already sold him. Spurs struggled to a 1-0 defeat to Brighton this. Unluckily I still had Son.
Pep did Pep things, which included starting Jesus and resting Cancelo (and Stones), suffice to say Gundogan didn’t get much to work with.
I clipped this just before the final game of the week
I actually finished with a game week rank of 7,534,932. That’s some achievement as there are only 7,940,734 players.
I don’t think my Discord friends knew how to react, I laughed at it. It was so totally abysmal I had to write it off.
The trouble is,only I knew the real truth, the reason I could shrug this freak game week off, I had a much bigger fear.
I had already been triggered by a memory. Failure February.
This time last year marked my crash and burn out of the top 10K, over 5 weeks I dropped from 5,359 to 152,261.
January 23rd 2020. It all began with captain Mane off after 30 mins in the first game of a double game week.
Of course I dropped in rank due to this captain fail.
Four red cards in my squad followed – including one for Zincenko.
A match postponement meant I lost 2 premium players in a game week.
Five red arrows in a row.
February was a nightmare.
During this time, I was ‘alone’, playing FPL in a void – no one I knew played the game. I talked with myself in my diary.
Interesting to see, I told myself back to basics
- ‘cover biggest owned’ players
- ‘don’t gamble’
- ‘patience with transfers’
- ‘remove weakest link’
- ‘ignore hearsay’
- ‘use eye test & shots in box stats’
- ‘a quick fix may only make things worse’
But it didn’t work fast enough. I lost patience and chose to select ‘some major differentials to try to stay ahead (of the curve) it didn’t pay off’. Diary entries ‘mix it up’ and ‘need to get away from the template’ further illustrate my desperation.
By the time the season locked down, in the middle of March, I had slumped to 238k.
Perception
Looking back, I recall how devastating this period was for me at the time. Now armed with far more knowledge (and the support in my Discord group) I would be able to handle it differently.
And guess what, time to practise what I preach, I have just had my worst week ever in FPL.
Groundhog day. Like the film, it’s happening all over again.
In a week where the average was 48 I scored 23 points, my OR dropped from 74k to 228k.
We should be strategising for consistency over a block of results, not allowing one anomaly of a game week to rudely skew our perspective. After all, being successful in FPL isn’t about being the most skillful player, but being the slightly above average player, who, with a couple of lucky breaks gets in grasping distance of the prize.
Blog ‘Golden’ 10th December 2020
What it boils down to, the very essence of FPL, is that it’s a guessing game, which you play against 7 million other people, but equally, if not more importantly, you play your own self.
In poker there are 52 cards, you can count them, and make use of probabilities to predict your opponents hand (and psychology to ascertain how he might play it out).
In FPL there are 20 squads of 25 individuals, with 20 managers, all projecting their own ideas and current mental state, then add injuries, the weather, COVID, VAR, and on and on (as Vince says it’s like War & Peace) – that’s a mighty big deck of variables to deal with.
As the song says, you need to know when to hold, when to fold, know when to walk away and know when to run.
I am not at the running away stage yet. Let’s see how February pans out.
If I can’t pull it back by game week 30 – ie enter the top 100k again – I might have to turn the tables, abandon this season and test some theories for next.
Inspiration for this weeks blog
Lateriser’s very useful article from this time last year
Groundhog Day is a 1993 film where the hero awakes to find he is reliving the same day over and over.
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