How to win your FPL mini-league

Expected points is the correct objective if your goal is a top-10k global finish. Almost nobody's goal is that. Your goal is finishing above eight named people, and those are mathematically different problems with different answers.

The difference is largest exactly when you care most. If you are forty points behind with six gameweeks left, the highest-expected-points move is usually the move your rival is also making — so it changes nothing, and you finish forty points behind having played optimally.

When you are behind, you do not need to score well. You need to score differently. A player your rival owns cannot gain you anything on them, however many points he scores — you both get him.

That means deliberately owning players your rivals do not, and captaining differentials rather than the safe pick. It will feel wrong, because every piece of content you read is written for the global-rank player. It is not wrong; it is the only lever you have.

The cost is real: a differential captain that blanks costs you against the field. That is the trade, and it is worth making in proportion to how far behind you are.

Defending a lead is about removing your rivals' chances to gain, not creating your own. If the person chasing you owns a premium you do not, they gain every week he hauls and you can do nothing about it.

So cover their differentials. Own what they own. Take the boring captain. A gameweek where you both score 60 is a gameweek you won, because there is one fewer left.

This is the advice nobody publishes, because it is useless to someone chasing a global rank and it makes for bad content.

A chip played in the same gameweek as your rival's chip buys you almost nothing against them. A chip played in a week they are exposed and you are not is worth double what the raw points say.

If you are chasing, hold. If you are leading and the chaser plays a chip, playing yours the same week neutralises most of the swing they were buying.

Sometimes the honest answer is that you cannot catch the leader, and the useful target is the person one place above you. Pretending otherwise wastes a season.

This is the number Overtake exists to give you: not expected points, but the probability that you finish above each specific person, and what changes it.