Chips are the biggest swing tools in Fantasy Premier League. Played well, a single chip can bank you a huge one-week haul or quietly rebuild your entire squad for free. Played on a whim, it's simply wasted — and you don't get it back. The managers who climb the rankings aren't necessarily better at picking players; they're better at timing.
This guide covers how to think about each chip. It's about principles, not a fixed gameweek to circle — the fixtures change every season, and the whole point is to read your situation.
Note: FPL periodically adjusts how many chips you get and when they reset across the season. Always confirm the current rules and your available chips on the official FPL site before you plan around them — treat the ideas here as a framework, not a fixed schedule.
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The golden rule: chips reward setups, not rescues
The single most common chip mistake is playing one to escape a bad week — firefighting an injury crisis, or salvaging a blank. Chips are worth the most when you play them into a situation you built on purpose, not one you're scrambling out of. Every chip below rewards planning a week or two ahead. If you're reaching for a chip because this week went wrong, pause: you're probably about to waste it.
Wildcard: reset when the gap is too big to fix with transfers
The Wildcard lets you make unlimited transfers in a single gameweek with no points hits. It's not a panic button — it's a reset for structural problems.
Play your Wildcard when:
- Your squad has drifted so far from where it needs to be that fixing it with
normal transfers would cost multiple point hits over several weeks. If you'd need three or four moves and a couple of -4 hits to get right, the Wildcard does it all for free.
- A cluster of your players hits a rough patch of fixtures at the same time,
while a group you don't own has a great run coming. The Wildcard lets you pivot your whole squad toward the good fixtures at once.
- The player pool shifts underneath you — new form players emerge, prices move,
injuries pile up — and your team is built around last month's picture.
Don't play it just because it's available, and don't burn it early on a minor tweak. The best Wildcards are aimed at a visible fixture swing a week or two out, so you're buying into good matchups before the crowd does. Think of it as a tool you aim, not one you spend.
Free Hit: a one-week team for a broken gameweek
The Free Hit builds a completely new squad for a single gameweek, then reverts to your original team the next week. Because it's temporary, it's the specialist's tool for one-off scheduling chaos:
- A gameweek where many teams don't play and your squad would field a half-empty
lineup. The Free Hit lets you build a full team entirely from the clubs that do play that week.
- A gameweek where a handful of teams play twice. You can load up on those clubs
for a single week without permanently reshaping your squad.
The distinction from the Wildcard matters: the Wildcard changes your team going forward; the Free Hit changes it for one week only and then hands your old squad back. Use the Free Hit for a temporary problem, the Wildcard for a permanent one.
Bench Boost: only when all 15 are pulling their weight
The Bench Boost scores the points from all four of your bench players on top of your usual eleven. Its value is entirely dependent on one thing: how good your bench is that week. Four bench players who barely feature turn it into almost nothing.
Set it up, don't stumble into it:
- Target a gameweek where all 15 of your players have a fixture — ideally a week
where some of them play twice. Empty benches waste the whole chip.
- Spend the week or two beforehand quietly upgrading your bench so your 12th
through 15th players are genuine starters for their clubs, not cheap placeholders.
- The Bench Boost pairs naturally with a Wildcard: use the Wildcard to build a
squad that's strong all the way down, then Bench Boost into the right fixtures shortly after.
If your bench is thin, hold the chip. A Bench Boost on four non-starters is one of the most common ways managers throw a chip away.
Triple Captain: your best pick, your best fixture
The Triple Captain triples your captain's score for the week instead of the usual double. The math is simple — you want it on the highest ceiling you'll ever captain:
- A premium, in-form attacker with a genuinely favorable matchup. Elite talent
plus a soft opponent is the whole recipe.
- Ideally a gameweek where that player's club plays twice, so a single chip
covers two scoring chances.
- Prioritize ceiling over safety. You're not looking for a steady return; a
triple only pays off on a big haul. Save it for the fixture that could produce a monster week.
Don't settle. It's tempting to play the Triple Captain the first week your captain has a decent matchup — but a "fine" spot wastes the chip's whole point. Hold out for the setup that could genuinely explode.
Putting it together
The through-line across all four chips is the same: look ahead, then commit to a setup you've built on purpose. Read the upcoming fixtures, spot the weeks where the schedule bends in your favor — the double gameweeks, the fixture swings, the blanks — and line your chips up against them a week or two early. Chips played reactively are chips half-wasted; chips played into a plan are where seasons are won.
Roster Locker connects to your FPL squad with just your Team ID and works from your actual 15 players — so when you're weighing "is this the week for my Triple Captain?" or "is my bench deep enough to Boost?", you can talk it through against your real team, not a generic one. And if you play fantasy in more than one sport, it's the same AI and the same membership covering all of them — FPL alongside your NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB leagues, in one place.
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Roster Locker covers 6 sports and 7 platforms — trade grades, start/sit calls, waiver targets and live draft help, grounded in your actual rosters and scoring settings. Founder pricing locked for life.
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