How to play

Every week you fill nine slots:

FLEX takes any position. You can leave slots empty, but empty slots score nothing — and a team that fields nobody at all is eliminated that week.

Your nine players' points are added together. Clear the target and you survive to next week. Fall short and your season ends there — there is no second chance and no consolation bracket.

The target rises as the season goes on:

Your league's commissioner can set different targets — the ones above are the defaults. The number that counts is always the one shown on your roster and standings pages.

This is the rule the game is named after. Once a player has been in your line-up, he can never be picked by that team again for the rest of the season.

Spend your best receiver in week 1 and he is unavailable in week 12, when the target is at its highest and your options have thinned. Save him too long and you may not survive to use him.

The rule is per team, not per person, and per league. Two teams in the same league can both use the same player, and if you run two teams yourself, each keeps its own history.

Half-PPR. Standard scoring plus half a point per reception. Points come from FantasyPros and refresh through the day as games are played.

A player on a bye can be picked, and will score 0. A player who doesn't play scores 0 too. Neither is a mistake the app will stop you making — a dash means not scored yet, a 0.0 means played and scored nothing.

Each player locks at their own kickoff. Once a game starts, the players in it can't be added to your roster or removed from it. If your running back goes off injured in the first quarter, he stays in your line-up.

Everyone else locks after the week's last game. Slots you haven't filled by then stay empty and score nothing.

So a player on Thursday night is a decision you make by Thursday; a player on Monday night is one you can leave until Monday.

Teams can only join during week 1. Once week 1 locks, the league is closed — a team joining later would have no week-1 roster and would be eliminated on arrival, so there's no fair way to admit one.

A request to join expires after 3 days if the commissioner hasn't accepted it. Some leagues allow more than one team per person; the Leagues page will offer it when yours does.

Three ways, in the order they're checked:

• One team left. Everyone else has been eliminated. That team wins.
• Nobody survives the week. If the last teams standing all miss the target together, the win goes to whoever scored the most points across the whole season.
• The final week is survived. More than one team reaches the end alive — highest season total wins.

If two teams tie on season points, no champion is recorded. The app won't invent a tie-break; your league can settle it however it likes.

Don't spend stars on easy weeks. An early target is the lowest one you'll face. Clearing it by forty points costs you exactly the same players as clearing it by one.

Watch the position you'll run out of first. There are far fewer startable quarterbacks, kickers and defences than receivers. Most teams go out because they have nobody left at one slot, not because they had a bad week.

Late kickoffs are free information. Players locking on Monday night can be chosen once you already know what you need. Filling every slot on Thursday gives that away.