Selling players as underevaluations

In the past, the most common way people have raised cash has been to bring in youths, get them to double jump (e.g. a 17/4 to an 18/6) and then sell them on. However, something that is becoming increasingly common is the deliberate sale of players that will increase skill on transfer. I've seen more adverts in the forums of late for players that are being listed as underevaluations, and it makes sense to sell players in this way as you can get the skill increase without an increase in age.

My first thoughts are this approach would work better in the official leagues - you can sell players quite late into a long season (thus maximising the skill increase a player will get), you can pick a target league to sell to and it's easier for managers to verify the players you are selling. However, I will be trying this approach in a private league, with the aim of training a player and then selling them as a double underevaluation.

My Red Army side has two young strikers that are both very high in their skill band - Makalov is on 6.4 skill and Anosov is on 5.4. Obtaining a double at the end of the season for both is a viable target, although I believe I can maximise their selling potential due to the nature of the league. The division has nine teams with one match a week, so it's 16 games over 18 weeks. There are also two cups so there's plenty of room to garner extra match experience, especially as I made the final of one and am confident that I can progress quite far in the other, two-legged affair. If I keep the two players' forms up, I believe I can get the players to their target DVs - Makalov would need to be on about 18 DV if I sell at the very last moment to gain 1.1 skill, while Anosov will need a high 18 / low 19 by my reckoning, as he needs the extra 0.1 skill due to even rounding.

It will be the first time I've purposely sold underevaluations and I think it will be useful to gain some experience of listing and attempting to advertise deliberate underevals as well as providing me data for the mini-CR.

The science of underevals

"Underevals", or players that gain skill bar on transfer, are starting to become a more popular method of farming players, particularly with the new threads in the forums created for the purpose of advertising players. In a previous post, I discussed what happens when a transfer takes place, but I'll build on that by discussing how you can use that to your advantage when selling players.

The basic premise

Players gain or lose skill on transfer, based on their average form, match experience and the amount the season has progressed. The way the skill increase / decrease is calculated is very similar to the way that it is at the change report, although there is one difference; at the change report, players get a random amount of between 0 and 0.2 as an additional gain (or loss) at the CR, but this is not applied on transfers.

Setting players up to become underevals

Building players up in order to sell them as underevals is a similar approach to training players normally - maintain form and ensure you give enough game time. The higher the form and the greater the match experience, the bigger the skill increase. Selling later in the season will also increase the skill gain a player makes. It's worth noting, however, that you don't necessarily need to get a huge skill increase - just enough so that the player gains a skill bar. You may find that, if you have a player that is high in their skill band, it's easier to try and sell them as an undereval than trying to attain a double jump with them, especially if you have lots of other players that need match experience.

When exactly to sell

There are a couple of things to consider when trying to sell underevals - whether you've earned enough of a skill increase for a visible jump on transfer, and whether there are teams actively looking for players. While selling four days before the deadline will give the maximum increase, you won't want to sell then if there aren't many leagues in silly season (which you can spot in the official leagues, but is mainly down to luck in private ones), and there's not much point keeping a player for extra weeks if you've already done enough for them to gain skill.

Calculating the DV a player needs to be an undereval

This calculator should help you work out what DV you will need to make a player an undereval given a point in the season. Note that I have written the calculator to be slightly pessimistic, in that they should return a DV that will guarantee an undereval, but you use it at your own risk.

Age:	16-20 21-22 23-25 26-28 29-31 32-35
Skill:
Average Form:
Amount of season that has passed (on day of listing):	of days / games

Finding a player's target DV

Following on from the creation of my skill calculator, one logical step would be to try and find out what a player's DV needs to be at the next CR in order to secure a gain of one (or possibly two) skill bars. I have been collecting data on skill gains from change reports for some time (as well as using data supplied by gildar), and have put together this crude calculator that can help you work out what DV you should be aiming for for your players.

Note: I've supplied a minimum DV required (i.e. a value at which all the players observed with that DV have gained the needed skill) and an average DV value (where on average, the player has gained enough skill). You should definitely aim for the higher of the two DV values where possible. These values are based on actual change reports, but you still use the figures at your own risk.

Age:	16-20 21-22 23-25 26-28 29-31
Skill:
Calculate DV needed for:	single jump double jump

The relationship between ME, AF and DV

I posted here about the relationship between ME, AF and DV, but now I've turned that info into two calculators that will allow you to approximate a player's current ME if you know their DV and AF, but also allow you to estimate a player's potential DV based on a value for average form and an amount of match experience. Note that the DV calculator will probably become inaccurate for ME values > 500 (or where a player has more than five times the ME required for DV to equal AF, which is impossible in most leagues), and that these calculators won't be accurate for players aged 33 or over.

Note that the calculators will take a decimal value for average form, so if you are VIP you may be able to get a more accurate figure from the form graph to use.

Match experience calculator

Average Form:
DV type	Old (0 to 20)	New (-10 to +10)
Development Value:

Development value calculator

Average Form:
Match Experience:

Development Value, Match Experience and Average Form

Knowing about how the Development Value (or DV) works is an important part of the game, as being able to successfully train up your players allows you to improve the skill of your players and increase the value of your squad.

There are two factors that contribute to a player's DV (and ultimately, how they will progress at the end of the season) - match experience (ME) and average form (AF). Knowing a little bit about how these two factors combine to produce the final DV value will help when it comes to maximising your team's development.

Players gain experience for each minute that they play. Younger, lower skilled players learn more from older, better players, both on their own team and on the opposing side. That experience is converted into a percentage value, such that DV is then a percentage of AF. The more experience a player gains, the higher that percentage value. However, something unusual happens when a player reaches "100%" i.e. when DV is the same as AF. Further experience still contributes to a player's DV, but instead of being a percentage of their average form, it's a percentage of 20 (the maximum value for average form) - AF. This means that players on lower average form actually gain more than players on higher average form for extra time played.

It's worth noting that, the greater match experience a player has, the smaller the effect any additional experience will have - don't be surprise if DV rises quickly to start with but slows down as the season progresses. I got hold of some figures regarding match experience and its effect on DV and have managed to put them into a graph which should help illustrate how match experience and average form combine to produce the overall development value, and the effects of giving players more than "100%" match experience i.e. what happens when you start pushing DV above the average form. The term "standardised match experience" just means I've adjusted the figures so that 100 is the experience needed to get DV = AF (players getting the maximum experience out of a game need about 4/14 games to get "100%" usually), 200 is double that amount of experience and so on. Realistically, you'll not be able to get past around 300 without having a cup, as cup games provide bonus experience.

One thing to note is that average form is incredibly significant for players with lower amounts of match experience. It's why it's not always a concern if players appear to gain DV slowly at the start of a season (when you may be trying to build form up after a change report). It also shows that you can't rely solely on match experience for DV, you have to maintain form as well.