Surefire way to work out what transfer a rival has made...

FHFC

Hi all. Welcome back all agony and ectasy of the new season. At the very end of last season I spent quite a late night trying to get my head around figuring out the transfer made by an opponent as I'd seen some people say it was possible. I ended up with what I think is a pretty foolproof way to do it. People seemed interested and I had promised to post it, but it seemed pointless as the season was over and the forum winding down. Maybe this is old hat to some maybe I'm giving away a trade secret but it's all my own work and hopefully it's something people will get something out of, certainly seems like something some of ye nutcases....I mean geniuses...would be into.

This is simpler to do that to explain so bear with me. In order to make it explainable I'll need to define some abbreviations.
TTV1- your rivals total team value before he makes his transfer.
NTV1- your rivals net team value before he makes his transfer.
BANK1- your rivals bank value before he makes his transfer.
(I.e. TTV=BANK+NTV)

Similarly.
TTV2- your rivals total value after he makes his transfer.
NTV2- your rivals net team value after he makes his transfer.
BANK2- your rivals bank value after he makes his transfer.

Finally.
NPV- the value of the he new player he bought.

I'll also use the player price abbreviations as per the format on the Data View tab on your transfer page.
CP- players current price
PP- players purchase price (what your rival paid for him originally)
SP- your rivals selling price when he made the transfer.
Note: I'm assuming all reading know the rules about buying and selling and profit and loss etc.

Step 1: I've seen people talk of taking screen grabs of your opponents page every day etc, but the only thing you need to know are the NTV1 and the BANK1. However you need to check this every day as if it's a day out of date player value rises and falls will create unknowns and this won't work. So you need to look in on his team in the morning, note these two numbers, and check again last thing at night to see if he made his transfer.

Step 2: He makes his transfer. So you now have the team value and bank figures before and after the transfer. So TTV1-TTV2= LOSS i.e. the transfer loss he made in selling the player (if any, If the answer is zero obviously he sold the player for the same price he paid for him).

Step 3 Knowing the loss number you need to go to his transfer history. And also open FISO Crack the Cod price changes page and click on the price changes tab. This page tells you all the price changes for a player so you can know what the players price was on any given date ( at least it did last year). This will allow you to identify the players(s) who your rival could have sold who would give him the exact transfer loss we've calculated above. I.e. By the dates on his transfer history for buying the player you know his PP and from this and the player's CP you can work out the SP and therefore the LOSS.
Now, THIS SOUNDS MORE ONEROUS THAN IT IS. And here's why. (a) you'll have a fair idea of the 5 or 6 players he's likely to have sold (b) a quick look at his transfers page will rule out some at a glance, e.g. If the LOSS figure is 0.2 the player sold must have gained 0.4 or 0.5 while owned so you'll know at a glance that players brought in in recent weeks who have not been totally bandwagoning are out.
So from my experience of doing it you'll be unlucky if you have to check the figures on more than about three players to get a match. If you're very unlucky and more than one player matches the criteria don't worry, it will still work but some checking needed later.

Step 4: The hard work is done now. You've worked out, or at least narrowed it down to two, which player he sold. And you know the SP he got. Now... BANK1+SP-BANK2=NPV.
So you know how much the player he brought in must have cost, and by looking for a player of the same position at that exact value can know who he brought in.
Of course there could be more than one option, but most likely there will be a clear favourite based on current form etc. (if you really want to verify it, you can keep an eye on his team value to see if the nightly rises in price on then go player you think it is add up).
Note that this works much better in he tag latter stages of the season after all the price rising means that not so many players on the exact same value. Early on there may be a lot of 9m mids if that's what the NPV works out at for example.
Also, if there we're say two possible options he could have sold, you work out the two possible NPVs and chances are only one will make sense to match with a likely purchase. If there are still two possible combinations which work the only way to confirm is a more complicated tracking of his team value Vs the price rises of the possible players. Or you could just cut your losses and get some sleep.

This will work 95% of the time, especially later in the season.

Of course it's not something that give huge advantage, or something you'd do every week. But when I did it in GW38 last year I was able to work out the transfer and likely team of my rival for a money spot in my league and it definately helped me win that spot ahead of him.

However the best use by far for this method is when you spot a friend has made a transfer at 10pm and by 10.10 you can send him a text saying "wow, transferring Mata out for Gerrard, risky one man" and completely freak him out.

Have fun, hope it's a helpful contribution.

manual_man

If he's made 2 transfers...?

skippy15

Won't work early on, and can easily be 5/6 players in same brackets eg: a 5mil def.

Lot of hassle for little information, eg: so what if he subbed a forward. you need to sub an injured/ susp/ bitten player:p
Only instance is very late on a season (eg after GW 30) when you are close

FHFC

manual_man wrote: »

If he's made 2 transfers...?

If two transfers made at the same time you can either work out all the possible combinations of possible sold players to give the correct LOSS figure, and then try to figure out what two players could have been purchased in each possible scenario. Or you can stop being an obsessive stalker and give up. I'd go for the latter.

Often people who make two transfers do one early and one late so it's be ok.

As I said it's not gonna be an integral part of the game for anyone, and early in will be hard with standardised player values. It's more a case of knowing how to do it if you really want or need to for some reason, and it's as much for my own reference in future that I put it here. I'd expect to do this for mischievous reasons more than anything else.

I do think by at most 10 weeks in, with early wildcards and bandwagons there will be enough variability in player prices (at least among players people are likely to be transferring in and out) to mean this will work most of the time. It won't work the first few weeks.

manual_man

FHFC wrote: »

If two transfers made at the same time you can either work out all the possible combinations of possible sold players to give the correct LOSS figure, and then try to figure out what two players could have been purchased in each possible scenario. Or you can stop being an obsessive stalker and give up. I'd go for the latter.

Often people who make two transfers do one early and one late so it's be ok.

As I said it's not gonna be an integral part of the game for anyone, and early in will be hard with standardised player values. It's more a case of knowing how to do it if you really want or need to for some reason, and it's as much for my own reference in future that I put it here. I'd expect to do this for mischievous reasons more than anything else.

I do think by at most 10 weeks in, with early wildcards and bandwagons there will be enough variability in player prices (at least among players people are likely to be transferring in and out) to mean this will work most of the time. It won't work the first few weeks.

Lol my question wasn't serious... - seriously i'd only expect to possibly use it in the very last(or two) gameweek(s) of the season if things we're incredibly tight in a given league... general rule i just focus on myself and trust my own judgement. enough variables/headaches when it comes to your own setup than to be constantly fretting what your opponent is up to

roryc

It's pretty straight forward to be honest. I was able to correctly guess my opponents transfers about 80-90% of the time when he made a single transfer. He was convinced at one stage that I had access to his account... still beat me in the end though! Practically every gamble he made paid off.

I wasn't near as accurate when he had 2 or more transfers though, probably dropped to about 50% strike rate.

GetWithIt

If I find myself re-reading the first post of this thread, or indeed acting upon it, over the next 10 months I will know that I have entered a very dark place of which there is very little hope of return.

Can't wait.

FHFC

GetWithIt wrote: »

If I find myself re-reading the first post of this thread, or indeed acting upon it, over the next 10 months I will know that I have entered a very dark place of which there is very little hope of return.

Can't wait.

LOL

One year ago I didnt know the rules of FPL, its a steep and tragic slope down which to slide!!