GW4 DRAWS AND DARK HORSE BREAKDOWN

I have attached The Doha Main Draw (FTL Version) and the Dark Horse Breakdown.  I've also attached the 3 ATP 250 level events in DelRay Beach, Buenos Aires and Marseille .  Plz note that the Qualifiers have only been placed in Doha and sadly the Lockout for GW4 starts before the Qualifiers will be finalized in all 3 ATP level events.

 

Do not forget to select your Dark Horse for the WTA event in Doha!

 

If you want a copy, click on the link, GW4 DRAWS  Once you do so, click on FILE, and scroll to MAKE A COPY, and call it whatever you want

Good Luck :)

Game Week 4 - preview Early Lockout, Dark Horse and FTL Cup!!

 Hi folks

A lot going on next week so I thought it would be worth doing a blog post to try and make sure that everyone is up to speed.   If you don't read the blog, you only have yourself to blame. 😜

Ok, first things first - lets look at the events next week.   

WTA 1000 Doha

This event is a Sunday start so its an early lockout for this week.  Make sure to keep an eye on time timer on your team page to ensure that your team is set up and time.

As a 1000 event as well, you will also be entitled to use a dark horse in your team.  Please note that its only a dark horse for the woman this week as the men are playing lower tier events so you will have a team of 9.

ATP events next week in Marseille, Delray Beach and Buenos Aires

Marseille

Delray Beach

Buenos Aires

FTL Cup

The first round of fixtures of the FTL Cup will take place in Game Week 4.  Everyone in level 1 and level 2 is included in the event and you will have been placed in a group of 4.  You will play every other team in that group over the course of three game weeks.  (Game Week 4, Game Week 6 and Game Week 7)

All groups and fixtures are available at the following link.

FTL Cup draw     it will be under the following tab (FTLCup - Group Stage R1 - GW4)

As usual you can check the following spreadsheet for an up to date player schedule which may be useful if you are looking to plan ahead with regard to your trade ins.

Player schedule    -

(for anyone playing me in the cup - don't rely too much on the tab with my team details - i might throw you a curve ball)   😜

Everyone can of course view their opponents current squad (prior to GW4 trades) using the app.

Right - that's enough from me just now,  i have a few draws to review and a strategy to plot for my cup tie against Abhishek!

Good luck everyone!

Game Week 2 Roundup

The FTL Season is now very much up and running with the 2nd game week now behind us.  How is your team doing so far this season?

We had three events in play this week.

WTA Singapore

It was an impressive week for Elise Mertens as she took the title in Singapore beating Ann Li 6-1, 6-4 in the final.  Elise only dropped one set all week (against Tatiana Maria in the 2nd Round)

Elise and Ann will both be getting a hefty price increase in Game Week 3. A worthwhile trade for this many manager for Game Week 3 even if they aren't actually playing.

Top seed Kalinskaya still seems to be plagued by injury issues and had to retire from her semi final against Ann Li.  Honourable mention for up and coming Thai player Manachaya Sawangkaew who had a great run to the quarter finals.

ATP Montpellier

FAA is always a good bet at an Indoor Tennis event and so it proved in Montpellier where he claimed his 7th Tour Title.  Remember when FAA was 0 and 8 for tour finals.  He is now 7 and 10 so definitely going in the right direction.

Player of the week however has to go to his opponent American qualifier Aleksandar Kovacevic who looked outstanding in his wins over Bublik and Rublev before running FAA pretty damn close in his final.  (Bublik was so exsasperated at his opponent's amazing level that he sent on the ball kid for a point to see if he could have any better luck).  Kovacevic is back in action in Rotterdam this week.

Honourable mention to another qualifier Jesper de Jong who had a great run to the semi finals.

WTA Linz

Ekaterina Alexandrova bounced impressively back from a pretty woeful 1st Round exit at the Australian Open to take the title in Linz.  She had an impressive win over Karolina Muchova in the semi final to set up a final against Dayana Yastremska who had beaten Clara Tauson.

Alexandrova took the first set against Yastremska before her Ukranian. opponent pegged her back and was only a couple of points away from winning the title herself in a hard fought final.

Here is the Global Fantasy Tennis League Table for the Game Week.

Congratulations to USA tennis who top the table this week with an incredible score of 501 points beating Forever Losers into 2nd place by over 60 points!

Here is the head to head between the two top teams

USA Tennis were starting afresh from this week so were a bit of an advantage over those of us with an Australian Open focused squad but that being said, they made some incredibly good choices this week.

They had all three winners in FAA, Mertens and Alexandrova as well as semi finalists Tauson, Kalinskaya, Muchova and Rublev.  Its difficult to see how they could have done any better!

The weekly prize always goes to a Level 2 team and our two top level 2 teams were Acehammer56 (Demy) and Nadal's Forehand (Dragan).  Congrats to both on a great week. 

Here is the winning Level 2 team. 

 

Demy had the perfect captain choice in FAA and also had Singapore winner Mertens.  Yastremska, Tauson and Potapova weighed in with plenty of points in Linz to give Acehammers6 a total score of 407.724

And after two game weeks, we also completed our first month of the season so the first monthly prize was up for grabs.  Here are the final standings.

Bibek's impressive performance at the Australian Open was always going to set him up with a great chance of scooping the January prize as well.  In the end however, the Commisioner and his value picks ran him tantalizing close with only 1.5 points separating the top two teams in the global league.

Bibek finished week 2 in an excellent 21st place in the Level 2 league which consolidated his place at the top of the leaderboard,  New Cal Aces continue to be the closest challenger in the Level 2 League. 

GameWeek 3 Draws - FTL VERSION

 ABU DHABI OPEN

ROTTERDAM

 

 

DALLAS

 

 

TRANSYLVANIA OPEN

FTL Cup 2025

 The FTL Cup returns in Game Week 4.

Everyone who is in level 1 or above has been entered into the draw.

We have an initial group stage where each team will play 3 matches and you will get 1 point for each match win you win.

There are 46 groups of 4 and the best 32 1st place teams will receive a bye to the 2nd Round where they will be seeded.

The remaining 14 1st place team plus 46 2nd place teams in each group will take part in Round 1. They will be joined by 4 lucky losers which is defined as the 4 teams in 3rd of 4th place who scored the most cumulative points in the cup game weeks.

Schedule

Game Week 4 1 v 2 and 3 v 4

Game Week 6 Both Winners face off and both losers face off

Game week 7 Remaining fixtures

Game Week 11 Round 1 (64 teams)

Game Week 13 Round 2 (64 teams - 32 1st rd byes)

Game Week 17 Round 3 (32 teams)

Game Week 21 Round 4 (16 teams)

Game Week 24 Quarter Finals

Game Week 29 Semi Final

Game Week 32 Final

The draw

Australian Open Results

I'd like to offer a massive kuddos to both of our Australian Open winners - Madison Keys and Jannik Sinner.

 

Coming into the AO, Jannik Sinner was the prohibitive fave to walk away with the title (this is what happens when you've won 30 of your last 31 matches lol, and won huge titles at the US Open, ATP Finals, Cincinnati, Shanghai and the Davis Cup) and when the Main Draw was posted, it was all but expected that he would at least make the final.  More often than not, these type of expectations seem to be too much for a player to deal with, but Jannik ended up walking away with his 3rd straight Hard Court Slam with relative ease.  His level of play in the Quarters, Semi's and Finals was borderline special.  In those matches, he made Alex De Minaur, Ben Shelton and Alexander Zverev look like they didn't belong on the same court.  Hell early into the 3rd set of the Championship match, Zverev looked resigned to the fact that the match was over!!  During the acceptance speeches he even commented that he's just flat out not good enough to beat Sinner right now!

Now lets discuss Madison Keys!!! She's had a hell of a career, but her emotions and nerves always seemed to get away in the big moments of big matches.  Entering the week, she would be on a short list of most talented players in WTA history to have not won a slam.  Her victory this week might be one of the most magical runs that I've ever seen.  She beat 4 top 10 players (Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Danielle Collins) and a former top 5 player (Elina Svitolina) in the same event!!!!  

Before getting into Maddies run, its hard to not bring up the elephant in the room - Coaching Pods.  I know, I know, what on earth are Coaching Pods?!?  This year, the AO decided that they would set up Coaching Pods right next to the court so that the players could talk to their coaches throughout their matches.  So instead of coaches giving their players signals and yelling single words to help their players, they could actually have a full conversation with them.  I'll be honest, I'm not sure Maddie ends up winning this title without these pods.  I know it sounds crazy, but thanks to the on-court coaching, Maddie was able to keep her emotions in tact, was able to stay in the moment and was able to change strategies quickly on the fly.  She ended up winning Five 3 set matches, included a 3rd set tiebreak in the Semi's against Iga Swiatek and in the Finals, she won 7-5 in the 3rd against the 2 time defending AO champ Aryna Sabalenka!!!  

Lets get this straight, Madison Keys was awesome at the AO, but without that coaching, I legit don't think that she gets that done.  Hell, I'm not even sure she makes it through Round 2, where she beats Ruse 7-5 in the 3rd!

Now in terms of FTL, I'd like to offer a massive congrats to our GW Winner - Blank (Bibek).  Apparently he knew something that most of us didn't, as he had all 4 players reach the finals this week!!  Between the 4 of them, he accumulated nearly 750 points!!!  The rest of his team didn't fare nearly as well, but it was still plenty good enough for him to win the week by 13 points as he accumulated 954.714 points.  What a way to start the FTL2025 season!!!

I'd also like to congratulate the rest of our top 5 finishers.  NEW CAL ACES 🎾🏝️ (Mathieu), Ultimate Zverev Hater (Devin), DalisVolleys (Jim A), Spotec25 (Martin H).  They were the only other managers to eclipse the 900 point barrier!!

Game Week 2 - lockout

 The Australian Open may now be over but FTL has only just begun and stops for no man! 

Game Week 2 features 3 events

ATP - Montpellier (250)

WTA - Singapore (250)

WTA - Linz (500)

The draws for all 3 events are available in the previous blog post together with handy price updates for each player.

Each game week starts when the first ball is played in any of the featured tournaments so with tournaments in different time zones, its important to stay on top of the lockout time which counts down on your team page.  All trades must be completed, lineups updated and teams saved before the clock gets down to 0.  I've "circled" trades, the lockout timer and the all important save button below. The save button will still be yellow if your changes have not been saved.  

Its likely that you will want to trade 2 or 3 players in this week for two reasons.

1. Firstly, you will want to have a strong team for Game Week 2.  Chances are you will not have 8 players for next week (especially after all the withdrawals from Montpellier) so try and trade out players who won't be playing and trade in a couple of players who will be playing and look like they have a decent draw.

2. Secondly, you will want to increase the value of your team. Every player who played in the Australian Open will now increase or decrease in value depending on how they performed in the event relative to their starting value.  

I've attached some of the more significant price increases and decreases to give you some idea.

Ideally you will want to actually trade out players who are dropping in value and not playing and trade in players who are both playing and increasing in value.   

Once you get the hang of FTL, you will find that it helps to plan ahead 3 or 4 weeks so that you have the best chance of fielding a full team in each game week.  I tend to keep a team planner which highlights which players are playing and when but just do what works for you.

I keep a spreadsheet updated which shows the player schedules.

ATP and WTA schedule

Here is a quick example taken from a team I created in the global league.

I'm quite fortunate with this team in that I already had 10 players playing in week 2 even before I did any trades so I have used my trades to increase the value of my team. 

I have therefore used my trades to bring in players who will increase significantly in value after the lockout and who will also be useful for future weeks.  As you can see from the above image my team will be worth 15m more after the lockout when taking into account the price increases of my existing players and the price increases of the players I intend to trade in, so you can imagine that you will be able to enhance the value of your team pretty quickly.

Kyrgios and Lulu Sun will both be going down in value. Even though Lulu is playing next week, I've decided I don't need her.

I've brought in Clara Tauson because she is increasing in value and should be helpful to my team in Game Weeks 2 and 3.   Neither Michelson or Vukic play in Week 2 but will be handy for Game Week 3 and as they are getting the maximum price hike, I feel they are a worthwhile investment.

You can check the prospective price increase or decrease of any players by using the calculator button on your team page.

I hope this gives the newbies among you some ideas for improving your team but as usual, feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Good luck in week 2 folks.

The week 1 updates will follow soon!