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Less than two weeks till the new #FPL season starts and so far 1.82 million players have signed up. Last year 4.56 million players had registered by GW1 so unless there’s a flurry of excitement around the Community Shield, participation in the game may have peaked. 
That’s obviously good news for those that are in. Except that the winner will probably already have been tinkering for weeks. Last year the winner Adam Levy was among the first 2% of players to register. And all but 7 of the top 50 in @FFScout Hall of Fame were in the first 10%.
So apart from a summer of preparation, what other attributes is this year’s winner likely to possess? Three things...
1) He/she will need a good start. It’s such a competitive game that making up lost ground is incredibly hard. Last season over half your final rank could be explained by how you were positioned after GW2. Of those who finished in the top 10k, ~60% featured in top 100k after GW2.
2) Over the course of the season a player will need to navigate around 500 unique decisions. The process around how those decisions are made, and the behaviours employed, are critical. The winner won’t get them all right, but they’ll get fewer wrong.
3) The winner will be blessed with luck. There’s so much great information and quality analysis out there that skill has been democratised. Given that performance is a function of skill & luck, if the variance of skill goes down, then more of the result will stem from luck.
So to everyone playing FPL this season, good luck. And to the winner: keep on tweaking, enjoy your early season boost, and stay strong!
