3rd session chip counts are in - and Christmas has come early

Originally posted on fplpokerplayer.wordpress.com




It is often said that "history is written by the victors", but when I said in my last blog that I'll keep a diary of my FPL progress, just in case I need it for end-of-season overall winner interviews, I was joking alright!?  Well, after running good in the third session and rising through the overall ranks to a personal best of 450th, I think it's fair enough for me to say:  SHIT JUST GOT REAL!

I maintained the momentum I picked up in the second session and built my chip stack up to 699 points, and moved up 22,970 places in the overall rankings. I find myself the current Christmas Island number one, and lead the way in the Beat the General, Fplwildcards, Macmillan, and FPL Happy Hour Cup leagues, as well as my own.  I’ve still not played any of my chips and my realisable team value has risen by 0.5m up to £101.1m.  That's an inflation rate currently of just over 4.7% p.a.

What a difference a year makes.  This time last year I was languishing outside the top 2 million and still bottom of my 18 player money mini-league, which I'd run away with the season before.  The first eleven gameweeks saw my respective defenders and goalkeepers keep just 4 clean sheets between them, and my title defence resembled that of Chelsea's in 2015-16!  From GW12 onwards though, I steadily climbed the rankings and completed my 'great escape' from ignominy with a top 150 thousand ranking, good enough for a face-saving fifth place finish in my mini-league.

This time around, however, I've already banked 26 clean sheets from my defence.  Indeed, this season has seen such a turnaround in my fortunes that it's difficult to not draw parallels with Leicester City's historic 2015-16 season!

In the absence of a Claudio Ranieri* then, what can I attribute my FPL transformation to?  Two words my friends, two words:  expected and goals, a.k.a. xG.  Whereas last year my spreadsheets were dependent on Shots On Target data, this year they rely on expected goals instead.  More about my spreadsheets later.

I said in my last blog that I was going to be making more aggressive moves, and taking more gambles.  True to my word, after only taking one hit in the preceeding seven gameweeks, I took hits in three out of the next four that followed.

[*For what it's worth, I've long argued against the mainstream view that a) Ranieri deserved nearly all the credit for Leicester winning the league, and b) he'd earned the right to be relegated with them.]

Calculating the net profit or loss of transfers can be a tricky business.  I often see people declaring the success or failure of such moves based solely on points in the subsequent gameweek.  In reality though, the effects of transfers ripple across several gameweeks, and can completely rewrite our gameweek histories, as future captain/vice captain choices and benching decisions are all impacted upon by the players we buy and sell.

As the screenshot above confirms though there was little wrong with my player recruitment during the last session.  48 points profit over 4 weeks equates to a healthy average of 12 points per gameweek transfers and, but for Mo Salah's poor penalty miss in GW10, I could easily have been looking at 67 points profit at a near 17 points weekly average.

In tournament poker, your tournament life will often be put in jeopardy by opponents playing their 'draws' aggressively.  And you may find yourself 'heads up' with an opponent you re-raised pre-flop, and you may find yourself hitting 'top pair, top kicker' on the flop, and you may find yourself continuation-betting the flop, only for your opponent to then check-raise you all-in for the remainder of their stack.  And you may ask yourself, well how did I get here?

Now this is a really uncomfortable position to be in because even if you put your opponents on a 'big draw', maybe a flush and straight draw combo, you may know you're ahead and have the correct pot-odds to make the call, but you also know that a lot of the time they're going to outdraw you, and your chip-stack will take a big hit if they do.

I had much the same feeling leading up to my big 'showdown' in GW11.  The pre-flop action saw a Harry Kane raise on Thursday night, and a re-raise on Friday night.  The stakes were high.  By the time the deadline dealer 'called the clock' on me, there were more than 600,000 new Kane owners, and the all-in bet I faced was 1.4 million armbands.  I 'went into the tank' and decided before my allotted time ran out to make the call with my top player, top kicker Sergio Aguero who I transferred in to captain my team.

I already had one Kane 'blocker' in the form of Christian Eriksen, but knew that transferring in Heung Min Son would give me extra 'outs'.  I also hoped he might be able to 'counterfeit' some of the hands with Kane in them if Tottenham scored big against Crystal Palace.

For the record, I also thought about bringing in Dele Alli too, but there were several good reasons for not doing so.  Firstly, he'd played every minute of Tottenham's previous 3 matches in all competitions; secondly, there were rumours circulating beforehand that some players were going to be rested; and, thirdly, unlike Son, he had none of the ingredients you need for the perfect pre-wildcard recipe.  Namely, he did not fit the bill as a one-week-only differential punt.

Appropriately enough, given his full name is (nearly) an anagram of MINI UNSUNG HERO, my lucky number seven scored the only goal of the game, scooping me a 10 point pot in the process.  With all those captaining Kane left holding nothing but a 'busted flush', Aguero's subsequent goal was the 'rub down' they didn't need.

I'd not forgotten Kane's blank when I transferred him into my team in GW8 to captain him for the supposedly plum home fixture with Bournemouth, but there were many other reasons for going against the crowd in GW11.

Ultimately though, it boiled down to believing Aguero would outscore Kane, because my expected goals spreadsheet was predicting MCI would win 3-1 and that TOT would do so 2-0, and I reckoned Sergio's share of 3 goals would be bigger than Harry's of 2.

I said in my last blog that most of my decisions will be determined by my spreadsheets, or my 'cheat sheets' as I dubbed them, and here they were helping me to finally break into the top 1,000

My spreadsheet's team goals predictions in Gameweek 11 showed a strong positive correlation with actual team goals of +0.63 (on a scale between -1.0, the minimum, and +1.0, the maximum).

The actual scores were as follows:

Thanks to my 'cheat sheets' then, I finally achieved a long-term goal of breaking into the top 1K rankings.  The harder task now will be to remain there.  There is a tendency sometimes after taking down a huge pot in a poker tournament to want to sit the next bunch of hands out, to take it easy for a while, and to think you have the luxury of simply waiting to be dealt good hands.  This is nearly always a big mistake.





Poker has taught me to avoid being complacent.  You cannot afford to relax until you've either won the tournament or been knocked out of it.  And as I'm not ready to be knocked out of the running yet, I'd better stay focused!
 
In poker, players are responsible for protecting their hole cards.  If they 'flash' their cards then people will look.  If they don't protect their cards then it's their own fault if people exploit that advantage.  I might need to start heeding that lesson much sooner than anticipated, and start playing my FPL cards much closer to my chest when it comes to declaring my captain picks,  transfer plans, and such like.  But for now, and in the spirit of the way the game is played in the FPL community, I'll 'advertise' below the scorelines my spreadsheets predict to be the most likely for Gameweek 12.

The next session is a mammoth one, with ten levels over the next 6 weeks, before the next break in early January.  I hope you'll join me for the 5th session chip count then.  In the meantime, may the FPL flops be with you!

Coley a.k.a. FPL Poker Player @barCOLEYna

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

'advertise' refers to exposing cards in such a way as to deliberately convey an impression to opponents about the advertising player's style of play


'blocker' is one of the cards your opponent needs to complete their hand

'busted flush' is a potential flush that ultimately fails to materialise

'call the clock' is how you challenge a player for taking too long to act. Once challenged, a player has a set amount of time to make a decision. If the player fails to act in the allotted time, their hand is dead

'counterfeit' refers to situations in which a community card actually makes a player's hand less strong even after technically improving that hand

'flash' refers to a card becoming briefly exposed by accident


'outs' are any unseen cards that, if drawn, will improve a player's hand to one that is likely to win

'rub down' is a deliberate act of putting someone down

'showdown' is a situation when, if more than one player remains after the last betting round, remaining players expose and compare their hands to determine the winner

'top pair, top kicker' is when you pair the highest card on the flop with one of your hole cards, and your other card is highest possible kicker, which in most instances is an Ace, e.g., raising preflop with Ace, 10, and the flop comes 10, 4, 2.

'went into the tank' is to take a lot of time to think about the decision on how to play a hand

2nd session chip counts are in

Originally posted on fplpokerplayer.wordpress.com

Okay, so we’re about to enter the third session of the 9 month long poker tournament that is FPL, and I thought I'd make a diary entry of my promising progress so far.

This post is inspired in part by poker player Gus Hansen (left), whose book Every Hand Revealed about winning the 2007 Aussie Millions World Poker Tour main event chronicled in real time his progress from the beginning of Day 1 to the end of heads-up play on the final table via notes he spoke into a handheld recorder throughout the tournament.

On the off chance that this proves to be my year in the World Series of FPL, I figure it'll be handy to have kept a blog, because apart from anything else, it'll make answering all those questions in end of season interviews so much easier, right?

DIARY ENTRY #1

So, what's the story so far?  Well, I had a good second session, building my chip stack up to 446 points from 170, and moving up the overall rankings from 602,989 to 23,420, placing me inside the top 0.5% of entrants.  I'm yet to play any of my special chips (Bench Boost, Triple Captain, Free Hit, Wildcard), and my realisable team value is £100.6m (£101.7 at current prices).

The field is still huge, however, and there's quite a ways to go before I can start dreaming about making the 'final table'.  As ever, it'll only takes a few 'bad beats' to completely derail my attempt to go deep in this tournament.

I’ve adhered thus far to the 'tight is right' philosophy subscribed to by many successful tournament players.  That is to say I've played conservatively and avoided putting my chip stack at risk early on.  I’ve been patient with my hands and kept gambles to a minimum, with only 1 hit to date.  While others quickly lost confidence in their gameplans and ‘spewed chips' in kneejerk fashion, I held my nerve and kept faith with the strategy of waiting until I got a good read of my table.  As with poker tournaments, and the Premier League itself, you can’t win FPL in the first few weeks, but you can lose it.

Obviously it helped that unlike last season I’ve ‘run good’ early doors with regards to avoiding ‘coolers’ or 'setups' (injuries and suspensions).  That said, I've endured a couple of injuries, a couple of penalty misses (Lukaku & Vardy) and a missed tap-in (Vardy again).  Nevertheless, I've accumulated chips steadily with most of my captain picks, and 'defended my blinds' successfully with shutouts aplenty.

In fact, whereas it took me 11 gameweeks last season to muster 4 clean sheets, it only took me 4 this time around to garner 11!  Contrary to received wisdom, good defence has proved to be the best offence for me (3 goals and 5 assists) and the cornerstone of my campaign so far, with 22 clean sheets banked already, including 7 out of 7 from my goalkeepers.

HAND ANALYSIS

My progress up to now has been achieved without being dealt any of the bigger hands.  I'm yet to be dealt either of the biggest pairs (A,A or K,K), more commonly known in an FPL context as Aguero(C) or Kane(C).  Instead, my biggest gains so far have been courtesy of 'medium pairs' like the 9, 9 (a.k.a. Captain Lukaku) I rivered a goal and an assist with against Everton,small pairs' like 3,3 (a.k.a. Davies) with which I've already won three double figure pots,

 and 'small suited connectors' like the 2,3 (a.k.a. Eriksen) I made a straight flush with against Newcastle.

Probably the best hand I played though was during the 4th Level, when I made a disciplined fold with my DDG 'out-of-position' against an aggressive opponent by the name of Stoke, and played my Elliot against a passive Swansea instead.  That round of hands also saw my patience with 'suited aces', De Bruyne (ace, seven) and Kolasinac (ace, three) belatedly rewarded with a couple of small pots of 9 and 11 chips respectively.

Naturally, there have been some missteps along the way, and I've lost some pots I should have won, most notably when I gave up on my Jesus hand too easily, folding to a bluff from Guardiola in the 3rd round of betting.  Pep succeeded in putting me a little 'on tilt' thereafter, because I compounded my error by 'overplaying' Chicharito twice in the next 2 levels.

SPREADSHEETS & CHEAT SHEETS

With 7 gameweeks played, however, I now have a 'good read' on my table; my season-ticker spreadsheet table that is!  All teams have now played at least 3 games at home and 3 away, meaning I can finally dispense with last season’s numbers.  From now on my expected goals predictor will rely on adjusting and weighting this season’s results only.

To me, my spreadsheet feels like an FPL equivalent of the ‘push/fold’ chart I use when playing online poker tournaments.  Essentially, such charts tell me mathematically whether or not going all-in with a particular hand in a specific situation has positive expectation.

By the way, these 'cheat sheets' are prohibited during hands in live poker tournaments such is the advantage they are deemed to bestow.  See below for a very entertaining hand from last year's World Series Of Poker Main Event for confirmation of the saying "cheaters never prosper".

https://youtu.be/afYv3xJLTf8

For what it's worth, McConnon's chip stack was a little too large in my opinion for his chart to be relevant anyhow, but certainly he was bordering shove-or-fold territory.

Thankfully, FPL decisions don’t also have to be made in a live arena without recourse to tables, tools and spreadsheets.  For the remainder of this season then, the overwhelming majority of my FPL decisions will be governed by what my spreadsheets tell me with regards to how many goals teams are expected to score in forthcoming fixtures, as well as how many clean sheets teams are expected to keep.

With this better read on fixtures and form, my plan is to gradually widen my 'open raising range' and make more aggressive moves than hitherto in a bid to acquire a dominant position in the tournament.  The aim is to reach a powerful enough position to be able to apply 'leverage' and force opponents to worry about my captain choices and transfers, and how best to counter them, not vice the versa.

Somewhat paradoxically, I'm willing to gamble more now in the hope of  being in a position to gamble less later.  After all, it is much easier to accumulate chips from a position of strength as a big stack bullying small ones, rather than from a position of weakness as a small stack.

RECOMMENDATIONS

So then, which teams does my cheat sheet recommend folding, calling or raising with during the next few levels?  Extrapolating the likeliest scorelines over the next 6 gameweeks from my expected goals spreadsheet, I strongly suggest not attacking with hands that contain Brighton, Crystal Palace, WBA, Burnley and Huddersfield cards, and raising with ones that have Spurs, Man City, Everton and Leicester cards in them.  At this stage, Chelsea cards are surprisingly only considered okay for raising with during the next 2 rounds, and only calling with thereafter.

Hands with 'blockers' from West Ham and Man City are deemed the best with which to 'defend blinds' with over the next 6 levels, while those from Bournemouth, WBA and Watford are considered the worst, spelling trouble for Foster and/or Hegazi owners.  The prominence of West Ham on my clean sheet predictor will surprise most people, and does have the look of an outlier here, if not downright anomaly, but I hope not as I traded Hegazi in for Cresswell with my GW7 free transfer.

END OF BREAK

So there you have it, the third session is about to get underway and will consist of four more gameweek levels before the next international break takes place.  I hope you'll join me then for my next update.  In the meantime.. may the flops be with you!

Coley a.k.a. FPL Poker Player @barCOLEYna


GLOSSARY OF POKER TERMS  (FPL parallels)

bad beats  - subjective term for a hand in which a player with what appear to be strong cards nevertheless loses

blockers  - holding one of the cards your opponent needs to complete their hand (goalkeepers and defenders)


cooler  - situation in which a player holds the second best hand, so strong considering the circumstances, that they are apt to lose the maximum with it no matter how they play it (Mane red card, Aguero car crash, etc)

defending blinds  - call or raise an opponent's raise when in the big blind, rather than folding an otherwise weak hand, in order to exploit overly aggressive players (clean sheets)

final table  - last table in a multi-table poker tournament. The final table is set when a sufficient number of people have been eliminated from the tournament leaving an exact number of players to occupy one table, typically no more than ten players

good read  - expectation of what hand an opponent might have (large enough sample size of data)

leverage  - the threat of facing bigger bets on later streets, which can be enough to motivate a fold right away (forcing opponents to punt on differentials)

out-of-position  - players "have position" on opponents acting before them, and is "out of position" to opponents acting after them.  Because players act in clockwise order, players "have position" on opponents seated to their right, except when opponents have the button (away fixture) 

overplay  - to invest more money in it than it is worth

push/fold  - reducing pre-flop options to either moving all-in or folding your hand

setup  - situation where two players had no choice but to get it all in

spewing chips  - generally trying to fight for every pot, which usually doesn’t end well (jumping on and off every bandwagon and sinking ship)