FPL chip planner: Wildcard, Free Hit, Bench Boost, Triple Captain

How to use the chip planner

1. Each of your eight chips has a drop-down list showing only the gameweeks in which FPL lets you play it.
2. Gameweeks where some teams play twice are marked “double for N teams”; weeks where teams have no match are marked “N teams blank”.
3. Pick a gameweek for each chip you want to plan. The table below shows the whole remaining season with your chips filled in.
4. If two chips land in the same week, or a chip is outside its window, the planner says so in red.

When to play a free hit in FPL

A free hit FPL move gives you a completely new team for one gameweek, then puts your old squad back. That makes it the right tool for weeks that are unusual for everyone: a blank gameweek, where several clubs have no fixture because of cup ties or postponements, or a double gameweek where you want as many doubling players as possible for one week only. Played in an ordinary week it is mostly wasted, because the squad you build is not much better than the one you already have.

When to play a wildcard in FPL

A wildcard FPL move is a full rebuild that you keep. The best times are:

• Before a good run of fixtures for several strong teams, so the new squad has a reason to stay together. Use the fixture difficulty ticker to find those runs.
• Just before a double gameweek, so you can load up on doubling players and then Bench Boost the week after with a full bench of doublers.
• When your team is broken: several injuries, players who lost their place, or a squad that needs more than three transfers to fix.

Because you now get a second Wildcard from gameweek 20, many managers use the first one in the autumn to fix early-season mistakes and save the second for the double gameweeks that usually come late in the season.

Bench Boost and Triple Captain

Both reward volume. Bench Boost counts the points of your four substitutes as well, so it is worth most when all fifteen players have a match, ideally two. Triple Captain makes your captain score three times instead of twice; the best week is when a top player has two easy matches. Plan both for double gameweeks and keep your Wildcard or Free Hit next to them to set the squad up.

A sample plan

A common shape for a season looks like this: first Wildcard around gameweeks 4 to 8 to correct early picks; first Triple Captain and Bench Boost in the best double before gameweek 19 (or in a normal week near the end of the window so they are not wasted); second-half Free Hit in the biggest blank gameweek; second Wildcard the week before the biggest double, with Bench Boost straight after it. The dates move every season, which is why the planner reads the doubles and blanks from the current fixture list.

How we tested it

We tested the rule checks on a small made-up season: a Wildcard placed in gameweek 1 is rejected (its window starts in gameweek 2), two chips in the same gameweek are rejected, and a plan with each chip in its own legal week passes. We also checked that doubles and blanks are counted correctly per gameweek, and that the real downloaded data has 20 teams with 38 fixtures each.