A team of artificial intelligence (AI) experts from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is challenging fantasy football managers across the world to take on their fiercely competitive machine learning algorithm.
Associate Professor Sarvapali (Gopal) Ramchurn claims that his system, known as Squadguru, consistently outperforms millions of players in the popular Fantasy Premier League game by tapping into the latest AI techniques.
Associate Professor Sarvapali (Gopal) Ramchurn
Squadguru has been tested on player data from previous seasons and produced teams which would have consistently ranked in the top one per cent of the Fantasy Premier League. Out of millions of players last season, a Squadguru generated team placed in the global top 60,000 of the game for most of the 38 game-weeks.
Gopal commented:
“From Elon Musk to Stephen Hawking, everyone’s talking about AI taking over the world – is that now also true for Fantasy Football?
“Come and take on the best AI engine for fantasy football, and see if you can beat the Squadguru!”
Fantasy managers can compete with Squadguru’s AI-fuelled 11 in a ‘Challenge the Squadguru’ league which is available in the free fantasy.premierleague.com game by entering league code: 2917382-677658.
Gopal, a member of the University’s Agents, Interaction and Complexity research group, co-developed the algorithm with Dr Tim Matthews as part of his MSc project. This resulted in a publication at the world’s top AI conference back in 2012. Over the last five years, they have made significant improvements to the Squadguru and offered it as a free service for visitors to fantasyfootballfirst.co.uk.
