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Understanding how to use the FPL Bench Boost effectively is crucial for boosting your score across the season. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explain the FPL Bench Boost rules, when to activate it, and provide actionable strategies to help you get the most out of this powerful chip.
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To be clear up front, though… Fantasy Premier League is a bloody hard game. More often than not, it makes you feel like an absolute idiot for stuff happening that’s almost entirely out of your control.
So, why on Earth do we bother? Well… because sometimes things do work out! Sometimes we do score a good number of points, and – when that happens – we feel like geniuses!
FPL itself helps you out a select few times per season with this, and one of the best ways is definitely with the Fantasy Premier League bench boost.
In this article, you really are going to learn everything you ever wanted to know about the FPL bench boost rules… and more! I’ll also dish out some smoking hot tips on how to use your bench boost, explain how it can be used in conjunction with your wildcard, and maybe even – y’know – give you some advice that’ll actually help you score more points. Stranger things have happened.
To help all of us fools score more points a few more times a season, the powers-that-be at FPL Towers give us chips to help us along.
These aren’t chips you can eat, nor that you can gamble with, unfortunately.
No – they’re basically special abilities you can deploy a handful of times to give your fortunes a temporary boost.
In addition to the wildcard, there are three main chips. These are the free hit, triple captain, and – you guessed it – the bench boost.
So, what is the bench boost in FPL? Glad you asked, friend.
In Fantasy Premier League, you always need a squad of 15 players. This must consist of 13 outfield players and two goalkeepers.
*Checks the maths in his head* Yes, that’s right! (I think).
As is typically the case in real life, you can only start 11 of that bunch, and the rest sulk on the bench.
In FPL, your bench players don’t score any points by default. They only get substituted in automatically if one of your starters doesn’t play a single minute. That is… unless you play your bench boost!
With the Fantasy Premier League bench boost, your entire bench plays that gameweek. That includes the backup goalkeeper, and the three outfielders. All four of them score points exactly as if they’d started, so – basically – you get 15 players’-worth of points instead of 11.
The basics of the bench boost in Fantasy Premier League are easy enough to grasp. Your subs don’t normally play; you activate your bench boost, and they do play, right?
Well, not so fast, amigo. There are Fantasy Premier League bench boost rules to abide by, after all, and – if you fail to do so – you’re highly likely to waste your chip.
To try and make sure that doesn’t happen, here are the most important Fantasy Premier League bench boost rules explained:
Obviously, there are plenty of other regulations you need to keep in mind throughout the FPL season. In terms of actual Fantasy Premier League bench boost rules, however, that’s about it.
There are really two key points here.
Firstly, like the free hit and triple captain chips, the bench boost can only be used twice per season. In other words, it’s very valuable.
Secondly, if you’ve activated your bench boost and subsequently panicked that you’ve made a massive, season-ending error… you’ve probably overreacted. But also, calm down – you can still cancel it! Like the triple captain, the bench boost chip can still be cancelled right up until the deadline that gameweek.
Could the FPL platform be updated and improved? You bet, and tools like BetterFPL have shown how simple that might be. It’s hardly disastrous in its current state though, and – if you were wondering how to activate your FPL bench boost – the answer is that it’s pretty darn straightforward.
Here’s a quick and easy guide on exactly how to play your Fantasy Premier League bench boost:
I want to try and do two things here.
Firstly, I’m going to give you some actual, good FPL bench boost tips.
Secondly, I’m going to attempt to do so without using the words ‘it depends’ too many times.
Ultimately, there’s no getting around the fact that when you use your bench boost can depend on your particular situation. That said, there are still three golden rules to follow regarding how to use your bench boost:
Here’s one way in which it doesn’t depend on your particular situation. Don’t panic and waste your bench boost. Just don’t do it.
However badly you’re doing, I’m a big believer in staying the course and staying patient in general in FPL, even if you’re going through a rough patch.
Panicking and using your chips just because you’re in a mini slump – unless you use them really terribly – can give a boost to your OR. Enjoy that while it lasts, pal, because your temporary high will almost certainly be wiped out soon enough, when everybody else uses their chips at a better time.
They’ll also probably score more points than you did, because they followed the second golden rule, which is…
Assuming there’s no deadly pandemics or monarchical deaths, the first half of the EPL season tends to go pretty smoothly. Usually beginning around Christmas though, the entire schedule starts going crazy, and carries on that way for the next several months.
Between the compressed festive schedule, European commitments, and cup replays, we start to see double gameweeks in the second half of the FPL season.
On the one hand, these are a massive pain to keep track of. On the other, they do provide the potential for major FPL hauls, since – as you probably know, you big smartie – if you have a double gameweek player, you get their points from both games.
This is the main reason for waiting to use your second bench boost. Free hits, triple captains, and bench boosts always get vastly more potential when the double gameweeks begin.
Like the free hit and triple captain, the bench boost in Fantasy Premier League can only be used twice. More so than those others, however, you’ll actually want to prepare for your bench boost multiple weeks in advance.
As noted, you can have four subs in FPL. It’s not rocket science to work out that you want all four of them to be actual, starting-calibre players – with the potential to score FPL points – by the time you play your bench boost.
This is harder than it sounds. The best way to make it possible is to use your wildcard, as we’ll cover in the next section.
What you should not do is save, save, save that bench boost… then realise there are only a few weeks to go, you’ve still got it in your back pocket, and now you just need to burn it, cross your fingers, and pray.
How do we avoid this? Planning and preparation, friends!
You really do want to set up your bench boost a few weeks in advance. Doing so obviously means having at least some faint awareness of all the upcoming fixtures.
You can scour these for yourself… but that takes ages. As in so many areas of life, it’s much easier to let someone else do the hard work for you.
Your number one option here is to use a long-term fixture tricker. Like that on Full 90 FPL, naturally.
Actually analysing this information is another matter entirely, of course. I’d recommend getting input from elsewhere here too, starting once again – of course – with Full90 FPL’s latest tips. It’s no fun to simply copy others, of course, so exercise some of your own judgement with advice from both here and elsewhere (even though we’re actually always right).
Usually, in the second half of the season, you can have a run where you use most, if not all of your FPL chips within a few weeks of each other. This isn’t always the case, but it can work out beautifully when it is.
To that end, if possible, I’d highly recommend trying to use your FPL bench boost and wildcard in combination.
“But Joe, you said-” I know what I said, damn it!
Yes, rules are rules, and you can’t actually use your Fantasy Premier League wildcard and bench boost in the same week. What you can do, however, is use your wildcard first to set up your bench boost.
This obviously requires some forward planning. You’re kinda supposed to do that anyway on your wildcard, though…
What it specifically requires is trying to get 15 players who all have good fixtures on the same gameweek. That might sound really hard, but there are at least a few gameweeks where you can pull this off every season.
It gets much, much easier to do in the second half, since you can aggressively target players with upcoming double gameweeks on your wildcard. Between those and a few nice single gameweek matchups, you’ll definitely find you can put 15 good players out there, with good fixtures, and – hopefully – reap the bench boost rewards.
The Fantasy Premier League bench boost can be a powerful weapon. To deploy it as such, however, you need to do two things.
The first is relatively easy: you need to understand how the chip actually works, which – after having the FPL bench boost rules explained here – shouldn’t be an issue… I hope.
The second, of course, is actually using your bench boost well.
That relies entirely on the good old Three P’s – prior planning and preparation. Oh, and a good dose of L (luck).
Don’t use your bench boost on a whim. Do set it up weeks in advance by targeting good fixtures, preferably with double gameweeks, and – in a perfect world – by combining it with your wildcard.
Overall though… don’t worry too much about it.
Playing FPL is supposed to be fun, and whacking the big, red bench boost button should be exciting, not stressful. Your season’s not going down in flaming ruins just because you mess up this chip. If you do nail it, however, it can prove a massive boost to both your OR and mini-league success.
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