How it works

Start with the weapon you follow: four fencers, men or women in any mix, and one nation, inside €33.3M. Add épée, foil or sabre whenever you like; each weapon brings its own third of the budget, and a full squad of twelve fencers and three nations has €100M. Four world number ones do not fit in one weapon; a strong four does, with some money left.

Every weapon you play puts you in that weapon's ranking. The world ranking is for managers who play all three. A weapon added mid-season scores from the next weekend on.

The pool is the top 32 of the FIE ranking in each of the six categories (épée, foil and sabre, men and women), 192 fencers in all, and grows on request.

Every weekend you order each weapon team like a real relay: opener, middle, anchor, reserve. The opener counts ×1, the middle ×1.25, the anchor ×1.5, on good weekends and on bad ones. That is the bet you place.

The reserve scores only when that fencer finishes above their seed. If a starter is not on the piste, the reserve takes that slot with full points.

The order locks when the first pool of the weekend starts. Entry lists come out the week before, so you can see who is actually fencing before you set it.

Two parts. Placement: points for the round reached, from the last 64 up to the win. Places 17 to 32 all count as a last-32 exit, as in the FIE ranking. Expectation: how far the fencer went compared with their seed. A top seed out in the first bout loses points; a number 25 who reaches the final earns far more than the placement alone.

Small bonuses on top: coming through day one, each table win, an upset, beating the top seed.

Grand Prix count ×1.5, World Cups ×1, the World Championships ×2.5. Zonal championships do not score: they are continental, so most squads would have nobody there.

The nation you pick per weapon scores from that weapon's team events: 20 points for a win down to 3 for the top 16, times the event coefficient. Grand Prix have no team event, so the nation scores nothing on those weekends. Every starter of your nation in your relay counts ×1.1 on top.

Prices move after every weekend: a fencer who beats their seed gets dearer, one who misses it gets cheaper, one who stops entering slowly loses value. You sell at the current price.

Two transfers per weapon are free in each window, from one lock of that weapon to the next. After that each one costs budget money on top of the price: €1.0M, then €2.0M, then €3.0M, and so on, back to free in the next window. The season allows twelve paid transfers, all weapons together; the free ones never count. Taking out a fencer who is not on the entry list costs nothing at all: no fee, no free transfer, nothing off the twelve. Selling is always free.

You should not pay for someone who is not fencing. Two Wildcards, one in each half, open the market for a window with no fees and nothing off the cap.

The season runs October to July. Each weapon has three Grand Prix (men and women in one city) and eight World Cup weekends (the men in one city, the women in another, on the same weekend), then the zonal championships and the World Championships. One weapon weekend is one round for your relay.

An individual event takes two days: pools and a preliminary table on day one, the table of 64 on day two, bouts to 15, no bronze match, both semi-final losers third. A team match is a relay to 45 touches in nine bouts; the third fencer closes. That is where the anchor comes from.

Flèche, Parade-riposte and the Golden weekend are set on the Team page before a weekend locks, and lock with the relay. Flèche and Parade-riposte go on one fencer each, never the same one, and a weekend takes two boosts at most. Flèche and the Golden weekend never share a weekend. The Wildcard is played on the Market.

• Flèche, twice a season: one fencer ×2, on gains and on losses.
• Parade-riposte, twice a season: one fencer cannot score below zero.
• Golden weekend, once a season: one weapon's whole weekend ×2, nation included.
• Wildcard, once in each half: until the next lock every transfer is free and outside the season cap.

They are worth it. Played on last season, a manager who read the entry lists, swapped absent fencers and used the boosts on the big weekends scored about half again as much as the same squad left alone, and the boosts alone were worth around 450 points.

Results, seeds, tables and entry lists are the FIE's public results. Points follow the rules on this page, the same for every manager. Fencers appear as initials in their nation's colours, never as photographs.

Photographs of the sport on this site are from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences:

• Apithy v Beaudry 2013 Fencing WCH SMS-IN t140751.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen , CC BY 3.0
• Stone v Balzer 2014 Orleans Sabre Grand Prix t120421.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen , CC BY 3.0
• Kovalev v Szilagyi 2013 Fencing WCH SMS-IN t194135.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen , CC BY 3.0
• Final 2013 Fencing WCH FMS-IN t200907.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen , CC BY 3.0
• Final 2013 Fencing WCH FMS-EQ t194733.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen , CC BY 3.0
• Women's Individual Epee.jpg by martin_vmorris, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Fencing at the 2012 Summer Olympics 5557.jpg by Steve Fair from UK, CC BY 2.0
• Russian fans 2013 Fencing WCH SMS-IN t210340.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen , CC BY 3.0
• Hall A 2013 World Fencing Championships n1.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen , CC BY-SA 3.0
• Korea v France Challenge RFF team t095058.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 2.5
• Final Challenge international de Paris 2013-01-26 193155.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 2.5
• Final 2013 Fencing WCH FMS-EQ t194733.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 3.0
• Lee v Lembach 2014 Orleans Sabre Grand Prix t135524.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 3.0
• Hall A 2013 World Fencing Championships n3.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Interior da Arena Carioca 3, Barra.jpg by Mariana Pires23, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Refereeing 2014 Orleans Sabre Grand Prix t121425.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 3.0
• Final Trophee Monal 2012 n08.jpg by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 2.5

The skylines of the venue cities behind each banner, also from Wikimedia Commons:

• Delhi skyline. 01 by Fredericknoronha, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Vancouver Skyline 04 by Xicotencatl, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Panorama Shot from the resort room by Dhaval Surana, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Budapest skyline from Gellért Hill (1) by Elekes Andor, CC BY 4.0
• Valley of Medellín- skyline by User: (WT-shared) CONOCER at wts wikivoyage, Public domain
• Hong Kong Skyline Restitch - Dec 2007 by Diliff, CC BY 3.0
• Lima, Urban Skyline--Ciudad de Lima, Skyline urbano by Joshua87, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Istanbul skyline 02 by SegLig, CC BY 4.0
• Busan, South Korea - Night skyline, 2024-09-20 by Sharon Hahn Darlin, CC BY 2.0
• Palma de Mallorca Cathedral by HJ.Phillips94, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Cairo skyline, Panoramic view, Egypt by Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0
• Turin skyline from Monte dei Cappuccini Turin by Peter Glyn, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Fukuoka Skyline of Seaside Momochi by Nryate, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Paris Night by Benh LIEU SONG, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Skyline of Tunis by IssamBarhoumi, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Pudong Shanghai November 2017 panorama by King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Modern Tashkent. Skyline by Citiguide, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Salt Lake City skyline (2020) from Ensign Peak by Iansmh98, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Athens Skyline by acediscovery, CC BY 4.0
• Bern Skyline by Anudeepvarada, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Doha Skyline 10 by Zairon, CC BY 4.0
• Heidenheim widok z zamku 3 by Andrzej Otrębski, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Plateau Abidjan de nuit by abdallahh, CC BY 2.0
• Bay of Algiers by night by toufik Lerari from Nice, France, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Orléans - cathédrale, extérieur (16) by Fab5669, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Prato della Valle in Padua by AnatolyPm, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Songdo Convensia and Central Park View by Ken Eckert, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Astana-Ishim-River-embankment-7797 by Vmenkov, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Taihu Yuantouzhu (North Gate) 太湖遊覧船 - panoramio by ktanaka, CC BY 3.0