Fantasy Premier League guide: when to play your Wildcards and Free Hit

Good use of Fantasy Premier League chips can make or break your season, so knowing the basics will help you to make the most of them

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Norwich City’s Teemu Pukki hit the ground running in the last Fantasy Premier League campaign and was a prime contender for an early season Wildcard draft. Photo: Reuters

Published: 6:00pm, 2 Sep 2020Updated: 5:55pm, 3 Sep 2020

Fantasy Premier League provides players with “chips”, a series of handy but limited tools to help players boost their scoring. These chips are extremely valuable. Astute use of a chip can mean the difference between landing that prize pot in your office mini-league competition, or losing out to your ice hockey-loving American colleague who set up a team before the start of the season – just for the heck of it – and never bother to look at it again – the ultimate embarrassment.

Part one of this guide will focus on the Wildcards and Free Hit chips.

First things first, what are they?

Wildcards

The most valuable of the chips available. Each player gets two Wildcards per season – one to be used in the first half of the season, and another in the second.

Playing a Wildcard chip allows you to make as many transfers as you like in any given week at no points cost. Beware: your first Wildcard must be played by 9.30pm (UK time) on December 28, 2020, which due to the late start this season means it must be used before gameweek 16’s deadline, or else you forfeit it.

Free Hit

The Free Hit chip can be used once a season. Selecting this chip allows a player to make unlimited transfers for one week at no points cost, but for one week only. After that week, the player’s team will revert back to how it started the gameweek before.