The Transfer Market – buying players

The transfermarket in hattrick is based on a auctioning system. From the day a player is put on the trasferlist, a deadline of 3 days exactly from that time will be set. There is no way to bid on players not on the transfermarket, and there is no way to buy a player until the deadline of the auction has passed. The team with the highest bid when the deadline passes, will buy the player. If a bid is put on a player within the last three minutes of the deadline (which will happen frequently), the deadline will be extended with the time of the bid + 3 additional minutes. This is made so to protect you and give you enough time from to decide if this is the player you really want, and then raise and hope the other manager gives it up.

Things to keep in mind

• Managers tend to bid for players when deadline is close
• Between the time someone overbids you and you raise that bid again, other managers can bid. You might have to race against several other managers.
• You will get a hattrick each time someone overbids your bid, but you will get no warning if someone raise a bid which is not yours

Timing

The ultimate time to bid for a player is exactly 3 minutes before the deadline passes, that way the deadline will not be extended, and it can go unnoticed by some managers. The longer you are competing in a bidding war, the bigger the chance of a third or forth manager gets an eye up, and starts bidding themselves.

The time of the day also matters. There are far fewer managers online during the night (Eastern Central Time , but also a lot fewer players). Usually there is alot of managers online in the morning before work or school (08:00 – 09:30), during lunch hours (11:00 – 13:00), when managers get home from school /work (16:00 – 17:00) and just before bedtime (in the hours between 22:00 and 24:00). Combined these make up  most of the day unfortunately. A very good time would be at 18:00 christmas eve! ;)

Strategies

When you have found a player you are interessted in, there are some smart ways to behave. And some rules to follow.

1. Determine a limit of how much you are willing to give for this particular player. Remember you are interested in revenue, not the player itself. There will _always_ come a similar chance. Believe me. Find a maximum fee, and never, ever go over it. Discipline man!
2. Never enter a bidding war. Ever. Its just too hard to come out of. If someone overbids you. Bid the maximum amount and no more. If he overbids you, you are smarter than he is, in the long run.
3. If there are more than two bidders, you don’t want to be there. Get out.
4. If someone overbids you and there is a long way to your maximum amount, bid in the last minute of the deadline. Annoy him. Make it take time and raise by the minimum amount. Then after a couple of 2-3 rounds of overbidding, raise a lot (your maximum price). If he haven’t given up during the sparring of bids, and does not now, well you are smarter than him.
5. Never bid on a player ‘just to get a message if someone overbids you’. You are raising the price! Think about it. He will find the player regardless. You just minimize your own chance of revenue!

Other good ideas

Become a hattrick supporter. The developers deserve it. Its not much money we are talking about. You get bookmarks! Bookmarks are your way to making it a whole lot easier on yourself. If you cant be online all day and remember to bid, use the e-mail warning function and keep your e-mail client looking for mail as often as possible. You can search and bookmark up to 50 players, and wind up getting only one. But that player will be your way to lady fortune!

Don’t buy a player because of his name, or his cool picture. Stick to the facts. Except if his name is Ryan Giggs. Then i’ll forgive you.

Age subskill

You will see age displayed as x years and y days. This is rather important. A player of 18 years and 1 day, has 113 days left to train with the speed of a 18 year old. A player of 18 years and 110 days has 2 days left. And price will go down alot when a players age ‘pop’. This is a weapon you should use, as many more have learned the trick. When a player, under the age of 24, is about to become one whole year older, the price will drop significantly. This is why alot of people, and you should two if you make a mistake, list people when they are approaching 100 days. Even if he has not ‘popped’ in the skill you wanted, he is worth more now without the pop, than he is with the pop and one year older.

Dont buy players about to age up

If the player is more than 80 days over his current main year, chances are he wont pop until aging and you will not earn as much as you planned to. Do try to buy players that have just aged, if they are about to pop. You can get them fairly cheap, and after the pop you will get a nice revenue.

Transfer compare

A fast way to see what the player you have setteled on buying is worth is to use the transfer compare tool, and see players with similar TSI and the same form. This gives you an idea what your max amount should be less than. Less than! Remember, revenue! What people often miss in transfer compare is the age of the player. Simply because it doesn’t show. The price difference between a 17 year old under 20 days and a 17 year old more than 80 days is idiotic. It might be 35 000 000 for a solid playmaking solid passing for the first player, and 5 millions for the latter. Because by the time that first player reaches 80 days, he will be excellent on his way to formidable. Worth a fortune. You want those kind of players, but you need some (hehe) hard cash first. So use transfercompare with this in mind. If you narrow down your player purchaces to players not passed 50 days, and you get players under the average price for someone with similar skills, form and TSI, you could sell him for just the profit, and many do. If you could get him to pop, and then sell him, you’ve got the idea.

A lifeline of a lifetime

Then last but not least. I am now confident that you have read and understood every single point in this guide. If you have not; stop here, go back and read it again until you do.

There are tools to help you. One of which could help your brain alot if you do it right. Namely; PsicoTSI. This is a firefox plugin. It is completely legal. And it will make your day a hell of a lot easier (excuse the language).  You can download the latest version from: http://www.aldeaglobal.net/psicotsi/lang-en.htm. There is also a post that explains how it works at http://bobymoore.blogsome.com/2007/01/13/understanding-psicotsi/.

PsicoTSI

What this tool does is to add some information to any completely visible player (your own senior squad or on the transferlist), and calculate the main skill subskill for you.  Behold a new world! You can now, with a glimse of an eye, see which players are likely to pop soon. Without doing that whole comparing players with same secondary skills, but different main skill, like in my previous examples. However it has three groups; High form (excellent, solid, passable), Average form (inadequate, weak, poor), Low form (the rest).

This tool is much more accurate for players in the middle of each group (solid and weak mainly). So I tend to buy players with solid or weak form only. The average of the groups. And in my experience solid is the most accurate by far. One thing you can also notice is that the skill for a solid player (7) can have 8.06, meaning he is estimated to be an excellent player. This is the perfect player to  buy. He will pop within 2 weeks of training almost guarranteed.

Dont buy players with a subskill lower than 75 (ie. 6.75) in his form group.

Chances are he will take 4-5 weeks with a passable trainer, or even a solid one. Why can some players be calculated to be excellent even if he is listed as solid right there? Well his secondary subskills might be high. You never know if a player has recieved 3 weeks of passing training and his TSI has increased because of that. So this tool can also fool you into believing a player is going to pop sooner than he will. Because of high subskills. Which is why you shouldnt buy players with lower than .75 PsicoTSI values. The real subskill could be closer to .50 if you are unlucky and you are looking at a player who will age on you before you get the proper revenue.

Summary

You should now be able to get pretty good signings. At least you wont ever loose your investments if the maximum price, age tip, PsicoTSI tips, form tips and transfer compare tips are used. It will limit the numbers of players you want significantly, but hey, remember; we are playing to win. And winning is fun. :)

I will do a complete first step guide for new managers shortly, and also a guide for your first purchaces just to get started. Stay tuned.

Almost ready to go shopping!

But not quite ready. What you should have learned so far is:

• What kind of players you are looking for. And why!
• How you can separate players with identical skills
• Find players that are close to pop and skip the ones that arent

What remains then? Lets go bidding for players already!

Unfortunately there are some things you need to know before you do. Mainly stars, stamina and form.

Stars

For every match any one player plays 90 full minutes, a star will represent how well that player performed. This is based on his skills and what position he played. The same player will (probably) not perform the same as a forward as a midfielder, because his skills are more suitable for one or another position. The more stars he recieves the better he played. beware that the star system in hattrick does not take notice of the opponent. One player will play as well against a crappy team as against a world class team. Also goals or assists have no influence to the number of stars. I have had players scoring 5 goals in a match, and still “only” recieve two stars.  It represent the contribution the player gave in a game. As with TSI, stars can be used to compare players, if they have similar skills. Note however that a inner midfielder who plays defensively can perform better than of the player played offensively.

Why are some stars grey and some yellow?

Haha, you noticed that did you? Well the total number of stars represent how well he really did. The yellow stars represent how well he contributed at the end, depending on the stamina. So the gray more or less show you the performance loss during the match due to lack of stamina skill. This is one of the reasons I have told you to search for players with passible or solid stamina.

What to use stars for?

• Comparing identical players in one position
• Comparing one player playing in different positions (you do this all the time in the youth team!)
• Looking at how good a player can be if he is playing at his maximal potential
• Give you a glimse of how well the player is performing at the moment

What not to use stars for?

• Compare the teams total stars against another teams total stars
• Comparing players who have played in different positions
• Directly figure out how good a player is (he might be better in another position, or with better form/stamina)

Alltid Hattrick

Alltid is integrating with hattrick, and can show you the history of the player. Every match the player has played is shown with the number of stars the player recieved. Compare this to his form and look out for players with many stars and high TSI, but low form. These can be hidden jewels for you.

Form

Hattrick isnt very random. Actually the lack of random may also be one of their strengths. But form, thats a bit random. And the good thing is, form is very important. It waries from wretched to excellent. Form will affect a couple of things:

1. The TSI will drop/increase significantly with changes to form
2. The matchreating and player contribution in a match is heavily dependent on form

In order to make solid chaiced on the transfermarket, you need to know about what form does. A lot of hattrick managers have a natural understanding about form actually. The player price will often be alligned with the players potential, not his current form. But if you are in need of player that will contribute right away, players with weaker form than passable are a waste of time.  it takes a long time for form to increase. When you are buying a player lower than solid (and I check for solid and excellent form players as well), you need to check his playing history (Alltid link) to see if the players form in dropping or increasing. You will try to sell your traineed/players after a maximum of 4 weeks if all else fails. If his form has dropped 2-3 levels, you wont get as much revenue. Maybe he wont even be playable, because of his low TSI. Players with similar skills and higher form will have higher TSI, and therefore be more attractive, as they can contribute more immediately.  And also because people arent as smart as you will be. Most people use the transfer compare tool and look at TSI vs salesprice. Most disregard the the fact that there is a reason why form is listed there at all. Its just for that reason; it indicates how good a player is at the moment, and what his actual potential will be.

Low form; an oportunity!

You dont need players to contribute now. You need to earn cash. Players with weak, inadequate or even passable form, and have just increased from lower form can give you a TSI boost quite fast with him popping as well. So you can use this to your advantage. Bear in mind that player form increase or decrease is random.

Background form

Skills have subskills, form has background form. The background form is the potential of a playerform at the moment, and a players form will move towards this backgroundform either you want it to or not. So if you have a player with solid form and wretched background form, his form will slowly decrease to wretched. its a sad thing really. Form never changes directly, its always floating towards that background form. And when the background form changes, thats random.

Form summary

The thing I have been trying to explain here is this. if you purchace a player which form has changed lately, there is a fair chance he will contine to flow in that direction. If he is decreasing you have no idea if he is on his way from solid to wretched or solid to passable. So dont test your luck. Buy players with a steady form for a long time, or players that have recently increased his form rating. Chances are it will increase even more, and thatws your bonus. If he doesnt, well you lost nothing. but it is always a gamble no matter who you buy, the background form might randomly change drasticly to the better or worse. No one knows.

NB! Players who play regularly will increase faster and loose form more slowly than players that do not play.

Stamina

In the same way that form affects the number of stars and TSI, stamina does the same. But its not as random. And can be increased more easily with training. You you keep your stamina at 14-15% players under the age of 24 will have passible to excellent stamina throughout the season. (This is a good page about stamina levels: http://www.hattricknews.org/stamina-study-what-percentage-is-needed-to-retain-stamina/) But a low stamina does affect the TSI alot. So if a youngster has a low TSI because of low stamina (weak or inadequate), he will probably increase within a couple of 3 weeks anyway and you will recieve that TSI bonus to your advantage when trying to sell him. If he doesnt increase, well you at least didnt loose anything.

If he decreases; well then you are not following my advice :)