The Player Stack
Ten real players, ten career-total categories. Clear the target.
How to play The Player Stack
- Ten real players are dealt one at a time, and there are ten career-stat categories.
- Put each player in a category. Their real career total in it is added to your stack.
- Each category can be used once. Beat the day's target to win.
Tips
- The categories are not the same size. In baseball a typical career is worth hundreds of total bases but only a handful of steals, so the board is decided by who goes in the three or four biggest buckets.
- Save total bases, hits, strikeouts and runs for the longest careers. A player with two seasons belongs in a small bucket right away.
- Don't always spend the biggest bucket on the first good career. Ten players is a big sample, and there's usually one more long career still to come.
- Watch for specialists. A speedster with 300 steals or a slugger who grounded into 200 double plays is worth far more in that one small category than anyone else on the board.
Worked example: a baseball board, pick by pick
A real ten-player baseball board from before launch. Best possible stack 6,238, target 3,700.
The players arrived in this order. The table shows where each one goes in the best possible stack, the one the solver found.
| # | Player | Slot | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greg Dobbs | RBI | 274 |
| 2 | Luis Robert | Strikeouts | 691 |
| 3 | Chris Stewart | Walks | 99 |
| 4 | Jermaine Dye | Total bases | 3,167 |
| 5 | Anderson Hernandez | Double plays | 17 |
| 6 | Andrew Brown | Stolen bases | 3 |
| 7 | Carlos González | Hits | 1,432 |
| 8 | Billy Hamilton | Runs | 454 |
| 9 | Brennan Boesch | Doubles | 79 |
| 10 | Rodolfo Castro | Home runs | 22 |
Card one is the trap. Greg Dobbs played eleven seasons, mostly off the bench. His best slot is total bases (810), and taking it feels safe. But that spends the biggest bucket on the first decent career you see. Three cards later Jermaine Dye shows up with 3,167 total bases. Parking Dobbs in RBI (274) costs about 536 now and keeps 3,167 open.
Long careers take the big buckets. Dye takes total bases, Carlos González takes hits (1,432), and Luis Robert takes strikeouts (691). Those three are 85% of the best stack.
Short careers go small. Andrew Brown, Anderson Hernandez and Rodolfo Castro played fewer than 250 games each. They fill stolen bases, double plays and home runs, where nobody on this board was going to add much anyway.
The specialist twist. Billy Hamilton stole 326 bases, which is a lot. But in the best stack he goes to runs (454), not steals. Runs is the bigger bucket, and stolen bases only loses about 323 when Andrew Brown takes it for 3. A specialist belongs in his stat only when nothing bigger is open.
Questions
- What’s the best strategy for The Player Stack?
The ten categories are not the same size. How to spot the big buckets, save them for the right career, and beat a target you can't see coming.
Read the full strategy guide- How is the target set?
- A solver finds the best possible total for that day's ten players, and the target is a share of it. A board of role players gets a lower target than a board of stars, so every day is fair.
- Which sports can I play?
- Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer. Some baseball days are pitchers boards, with pitching categories like wins, strikeouts, and saves.
- When does a new puzzle come out?
- Every day at midnight Pacific time. Everyone in the world gets the same puzzle, so you can compare results with friends.
- Can I play past puzzles?
- Yes. Every past day is in the archive. Sign in with a free account to play the last 7 days, or go Premium for every past puzzle. Archive games don't count toward your streak or the daily leaderboard. Replay a day as often as you like: the archive keeps your best score.
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