Chips – FPL

Your definition of chips might usually depend on if you are British or American, but no matter, in fantasy football terms chips means something else entirely anyway.

The seasonal Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game – which is the official fantasy football site of the Premier League – introduced chips to give players another chance to get ahead of their rivals.

These three bonus tokens can be used at any time of the season, although it is only possible to play one of them at once, so they cannot be doubled up in a bid to get a massive score one week.

Perhaps the most exciting of the three chips on offer in the seasonal Fantasy Premier League game is triple captain. While a player’s choice of captain usually doubles their score for a Gameweek, this chip means that for one week only, the captain earns three times their point score for their fantasy manager.

This has the potential to produce gigantic individual scores, but selecting when to play the triple captain chip is one of the most difficult decisions of the season in Fantasy Premier League.

Go too obvious – Sergio Agüero at home against a poor team, for example – and many other people will make the same choice. However, an obscure selection has the potential to backfire badly, leaving the chip wasted, although it is a good way to differentiate your team from the rest.

The second of the three chips, the all out attack chip was replaced ahead of the 2017/18 FPL season. This chip allowed a manager to play all of their midfielders and strikers for one particular Gameweek but it has now been replaced by the free hit chip.

The free hit chip allows managers to make unlimited transfers in a particular gameweek but their squad will then revert back to its original format for the subsequent gameweek. Again, deciding when to play this chip can make all the difference between success and failure in the Fantasy Premier League game.

Finally, bench boost means all your squad players earn points for the Gameweek you play it, not just players who you pick in your first team, which is particularly useful for Double Gameweeks.

Of course chips are also associated with gambling. While fantasy sports is primarily a skill game, there are ways to reduce the skill and increase the luck factor. We recommend that every fantasy player takes their hobby seriously and seeks help from organisations like SaferGaming if they feel things are getting out of hand.