Waiver priority & Reset Weekly
Your place in the queue when two managers want the same free player — lower number goes first. This league runs Reset Weekly: every gameweek the order resets to reverse standings, so the bottom club always picks first and landing a player this week costs you nothing next week.
Why it matters Because priority resets, there is no reason to hoard it — claim when the player is worth it.
Good number Priority #1 wins every tie; league leaders live at the back of the queue by design.
Land % (p_lands)
The model's estimate of the chance a waiver claim actually goes through — that nobody with an earlier turn takes the player first and your drop is still there to make room. 95% is close to a formality; 40% means expect a fight.
Why it matters A brilliant swap you probably will not land is worth less than a decent one you will.
Good number 90%+ is near-certain; below 60% means plan for the fallback.
Gain (projected points gain)
How many projected points a swap adds: the claim's projection minus the dropped player's, for the coming gameweek. This is the decision number — the engine ranks claims by it, gates the shortlist on it (at least +1.5 this gameweek, or +1.5 per gameweek averaged over the run-in), and the scorecard grades it against what actually happened. The edge composite is a comparison lens shown alongside; nothing is decided by it.
Why it matters When the brief says make a swap, this is the number it acted on.
Good number +1.5 is the bar to appear at all; +3 or more is a conviction call.
E[gain] (expected gain)
What a claim is worth once you account for the chance it fails: the points gain if it lands, multiplied by the odds it lands. A +6 swap with a 50% chance is worth +3 in expectation — the same as a guaranteed +3.
Why it matters It is the honest currency for comparing safe swaps against long shots — the queue optimiser's decision number, built on the same points gain the engine ranks by.
Good number The queue is ordered to maximise the total E[gain] across all your claims.
Snipe
When a rival takes the player you queued before your claim is processed — either they queued him in an earlier slot than you, or in the same slot with a better waiver priority. Your claim then fails and your queue moves to its fallback.
Why it matters Queue order is a game of chicken; the optimiser exists largely to dodge snipes.
Good number A low snipe probability on your top claim is the goal — that is what a 90%+ land figure means.
Submission queue slots
Your waiver claims go in as a numbered list, and FPL processes them round by round: every manager's slot-1 claim is settled before anyone's slot-2 claim is looked at. So slot 1 is not just your favourite — it is the one that races every rival's first pick.
Why it matters Putting the wrong claim first can cost you a player a rival grabs one round earlier.
Good number Slots are processed 1, 2, 3... across the whole league — early slots are the valuable ones.
Fallback
A backup claim on the same drop: if the main target is sniped, the fallback fires for the same outgoing player. If the main claim lands, the fallback is skipped automatically — you never end up dropping the same man twice.
Why it matters It is insurance: a failed claim becomes a decent pickup instead of nothing.
Good number Up to 2 fallbacks per primary; each must clear a raw gain of +2.5 to be worth a slot.
Naive vs optimised vs optimal queue
Three versions of the same waiver week, replayed after the fact. Naive is what was actually submitted. Optimised is what the model's reordering would have landed against what rivals really did. Optimal is the perfect-hindsight best ordering — a ceiling nobody could reliably hit in advance.
Why it matters Comparing the three shows whether the optimiser earns its keep, honestly.
Good number Optimised beating naive is the win condition; optimal only marks how much was on the table.
Optimiser lift
The points difference between the optimised queue and what was actually submitted, added up across the season. It can go negative in a given week: the optimiser bets on expected value, and sometimes the dice land the other way. Those weeks are reported as-is, never rounded up.
Why it matters It is the single number that says whether the queue reordering is worth trusting.
Good number Cumulatively positive is the target; single negative weeks are normal variance, not a fault.
Contention
How much rival demand there is for the players you want. The model predicts each opponent's likely claims from their habits — how often they act, what they chase after a loss — and uses that to price the risk on each of your claims.
Why it matters A free agent nobody else wants is safe at any slot; a contested one needs an early slot.
Good number High contention on a target pushes his land % down and his queue slot up.
Roster scrutiny
Before recommending anything, the model puts your whole squad on trial — every player is a potential drop, not just the obvious weak link. For each drop slot it shortlists the top 2 candidate replacements, and a swap makes the brief if it is worth at least +1.5 points this gameweek or +1.5 per gameweek averaged over the run-in. A drop slot with any qualifying swap always keeps its best one, even when the overall cap is full.
Why it matters It catches the quietly declining player you have stopped looking at.
Good number 2 candidates per drop slot, top 12 overall (plus one guaranteed per otherwise-starved slot), +1.5 minimum gain to appear at all.
Lookahead (cumulative gain)
Every recommended swap is judged over the next few gameweeks, not just one — up to 4 ahead. A player with a kind run of fixtures can beat a bigger name whose next month is brutal, and the brief cites both the one-week and the run-in numbers. This is a decision number: a swap can make the shortlist on its run-in average alone, even when its next single gameweek is quiet.
Why it matters It stops you buying one good week attached to three bad ones, and stops a slow starter with a strong month being filtered out unseen.
Good number The window is capped at 4 gameweeks (or fewer near the season's end); +1.5 per gameweek averaged over it clears the shortlist bar.
Ahead of the game
A flag on a recommended claim whose value is mostly in the weeks ahead, not this one. When a player's run-in gain clearly beats his single-gameweek gain — a favourable run of fixtures keeps paying — the brief marks him 'ahead of the game': worth claiming now rather than waiting for the swing to arrive.
Why it matters It surfaces the pre-emptive buy — the player to get in before his good fixtures make him obvious to everyone else.
Good number Fires when the run-in gain is at least +3.0, exceeds this week's gain by +2.0 or more, and is at least 1.5x it.
Season figure (board lens)
A season-long read off the draft board: a lens for comparing a swap's two sides, NOT the number the recommendation engine acts on. It reads last season's board projection (VORP re-priced to your own league the moment you view it) for the player you would drop and the player you would claim, and shows the difference. The board is blind to summer moves it has not yet re-priced for, so a brand-new arrival shows no season figure at all. That is a refusal, never a guess.
Why it matters A swap can win this week and still lose on the season read underneath it (GW3 audit, slot 5 withdrawn on the season view: data/audit/gw3-window-2026-09-03/REPORT.md section 14). Gain and run-in decide every swap either way, never this.
Good number Reads like season-long VORP points; blank means the board cannot price one side yet, an unbridged arrival or a departed player.
Rest-of-season figure (ROS lens)
A second season-long read, alongside the board figure above: a live model estimate of the points a player scores over the REMAINING gameweeks this season, built from his current form and fixtures rather than last season's record. It is a lens for comparing a swap's two sides, NOT the number the recommendation engine acts on. A blank means the model has nothing honest to say for that player yet, never a guess.
Why it matters The board figure looks backward at last season; this looks forward at what is left of this one. The two can disagree, and this machinery is unvalidated: the one-season replay against 25/26 could not settle whether it improves real decisions, so read it as a second opinion, not a verdict.
Good number Reads like rest-of-season points; a sub-label says whether it is discounted for a known fitness doubt, an if-fit ceiling with no doubt on record, or an average-player estimate for a player with no games to read.