So I decided to try something new. Originally I wanted to try Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) as it is quite hyped among Americans in Discords I participate in. However I learned that while gambling is legal in The Netherlands since October 1, 2021, there are no providers that offer DFS as of yet.

A quick search for alternatives led me to Sorare. In this game you need to obtain digital Football player cards and you can create your own teams of five players twice a week, and your score will depend on the real matches those players play! And a better score of course means better rewards!

I would love if you could use my referral link if you want to give it a try! Once you have bought five players from the market then we both can get a Limited card for free!

The costs

First things first, it is perfectly possible to play Sorare without spending a single penny, like most ‘free’ games it does come at the cost of progression taking longer however.

When you start the game you will get a bunch of Common cards for free and with those cards you can participate in games already twice a week.

For each season Sorare creates an unlimited supply of Common cards, a supply of 1,000 Limited cards, 100 Rare cards, 10 Super Rare cards and 1 Unique card per player. And with Limited or rarer cards you can obtain better rewards, also in terms of monetary value. And while you can win Limited cards in game modes that only require Common cards, buying Limited or rarer cards will definitely boost your game-play.

It also does involve cryptocurrency, Ethereum, but it is not that big of a factor, you can definitely play the game ignoring the fact that it uses crypto. Technically all your cards exist on the blockchain though and they really are yours.

I decided to spend some money because I wanted to boost my career, and reading about future changes such as Capped Modes I thought it would be a good idea to have some Limited cards ready.

The amount I spent was 100 euro, due to various Ethereum transfer fees I actually ended up with about 94 euro on my account and about 2 euro still left in my MetaMask wallet. I probably did some things wrong as I’m still very much a novice in crypto. An alternative to using crypto in this phase is to buy the cards directly using a credit card or similar means.

I have used those 94 euros to buy several Limited cards which I will discuss later. And while this can be seen as an investment, as player prices fluctuate based on their real life performance, I want to urge you that it is a risky investment. Do not invest with money you cannot afford to lose. All kinds of things can go wrong. It is better to view your initial investment into the game as money that you will never see back, that way you can’t be disappointed later on.

My teams

In this section I will detail the two teams I have made and how I think I can get some rewards. I’m sure that things will seem fuzzy in the beginning, I can only advise you to play more to understand more, and there are plenty of guides available on the internet if you want to know more.

Limited All Star

All Star is the game mode I focused on. I initially wanted to spend my full budget on that but I changed course a little bit as I didn’t spend all of it.

Below is the lineup I have chosen.

The most important details can be found in the table below.

Player	Position	L5 / L15	Cost
Régis Gurtner	Goalkeeper	47 / 51	39.74 euro
Mousa Tamari	Forward	60 / 52	17.01 euro
Antoine Léautey	Midfielder	50 / 54	4.81 euro
Casper de Norre	Defender	62 / 52	12.00 euro
Mamadou Fofana	Defender	46 / 57	9.13 euro

First of all I wanted to make sure that I was picking starting players, for that I used the Player finder from SorareData. Then for the Goalkeeper I went with the cheapest decent starting player, they really are that expensive. For the rest I went with decent but not too expensive picks, and as Extra position I took a Defender. Taking a Forward for that position is usually the better pick, but it would put me outside my budget, and it also introduces more variance as a Forward’s score correlates a lot with whether they score or give an assist.

The L5 / L15 scores are the average scores of their last five played games and last fifteen played games respectively, it is a good way to determine how good the players are and whether they are in an upwards trend.

This team will be decent, but nothing special. I would need to rank roughly within the top 15% for a Limited card price, and it may happen if every player puts in their work to obtain a decent score! It also helps that this game week not many leagues play so the absolute best players neither play, meaning that a lower score can work too.

Limited Underdog

With the money I still had left over, about 11.50 euro, I noticed that I could make another team. Underdog is perfect for that as only four cards are scored and the fifth one must be from another rarity, so the usual pick is a Common Goalkeeper.

Another important rule in Underdog is that their L15 score needs to be 50 or lower, so you are truly picking the underdogs.

My lineup is as follows.

And again the most important details.

Player	Position	L5 / L15	Cost
Curtis Main	Forward	39 / 39	3.31 euro
Mark O’Hara	Midfielder	55 / 46	3.54 euro
Isaac Sackey	Midfielder	57 / 45	1.71 euro
Bruno Godeau	Defender	61 / 41	2.75 euro

As you can see I downloaded this lineup image when the matches already started and it shows one crucial mistake. Bruno Godeau has not been a starting player the last few matches, I forgot to double-check that when buying and it will probably cost me this Limited Underdog league.

Having good results will definitely put you above the competition in Underdog, but it needs to be because not even 10% of the players will get a Limited card as reward.

I also could have picked better players, but they simply were outside my budget, I went down to exactly 0 euro even. Such picks are usually 60 L5 / 50 L15 players, which are way more expensive, starting at 15-20 euro and some even more.

The rewards

In the previous sections I talked about a Limited card as a reward, what what does that actually mean?

Leagues are usually built such that most of the scoring players will win a Tier 3 card, then fewer will get a Tier 2 card, even fewer a Tier 1 card and only very few players will win a Star card. And in the All Star league the top three will also win a direct Ethereum reward.

I created the following table based on the Limited All Star prize pool of game week 331 to illustrate this. Please note that the card values are very rough ranges.

Category	Player range	Card value
Star Limited	1 – 35	60 – 1,000 euro
Tier 1 Limited	36 – 155	25 – 60 euro
Tier 2 Limited	156 – 555	5 – 25 euro
Tier 3 Limited	556 – 1,550	0.50 – 10 euro

In this game week of this league there were 11,908 competitors in total, meaning only 13% will get rewards. The amount of competitors but also the rewards are variable every game week. In addition to the above prizes the podium finishers will get additional rewards, for this week that is roughly 282 euro for the top spot, 194 euro for the second spot and 141 euro for the third and final spot.

Final notes

And finally, I want to share some useful facts and interesting pieces of advice with you.

• When buying, always check if a player participates in the upcoming game week. All five of your players will need to play!
• Goalkeepers are expensive. Forwards are second-most expensive, then Midfielders and the cheapest players are Defenders.
• If you are new to the game, always buy starters. If your players don’t start in their matches, they won’t score points, unless they substitute.
• In Underdog you can typically use the Goalkeeper as Common card, this will save you a lot of money.
• It is suggested to have several players of the same club in your team, Forwards and Midfielders are strongly linked together, as are the Goalkeeper and Defenders.
• Try to avoid having players from directly competing clubs within one team, unless you really know what you are doing.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links, and we may earn a commission on purchases you make, at no additional cost to you. Read more about it in my How do affiliate links work? article.