How to play EPL Knockout

Every gameweek you choose a single Premier League club. If that club wins or draws, you survive to the next round. If they lose, your season is over. There are no points, no transfers and no captaincy — just one call, repeated until only one player is left.

Once you use a club, it's gone for the rest of the competition. Pick Arsenal at home to a promoted side in gameweek 1 and you'll never have Arsenal again. That single constraint is what turns an easy game into a season-long planning problem: by the halfway point most survivors are choosing between clubs they'd never normally trust.

Some leagues soften this with a reuse window — hosts can allow a club to be picked again after a set number of weeks. Check your league's house rules before you plan.

The deadline is the first kickoff of the gameweek. Until then you can change your pick as often as you like; after it, every pick in the league is revealed at once. Locking in asks you to confirm, so a stray tap can't cost you a season.

Forget to pick and the system assigns one for you: the alphabetically first club you haven't used yet that plays that round — Arsenal, then Aston Villa, then Bournemouth, and so on. An auto-pick counts exactly like a real one, including when it loses. Set a reminder; more players go out to a forgotten deadline than to a shock result.

Buy-ins are collected offline by the league organiser. The last survivor takes the prize pool, minus any host and platform fees your league has set. If every remaining player falls in the same round, the host decides between a rollover and a split — agree that before kickoff of week one, not during the argument afterwards.

1. Join or create a league and confirm the buy-in and house rules. 2. Look at the opening fixtures and find the safest home favourite you're happy to spend. 3. Set a calendar alert an hour before each deadline. Do those three things and you're already ahead of a third of the field.