10 Common Mistakes in Last Man Standing (And How to Avoid Them)

1. Burning Your Best Teams in the First Few Weeks

This is the single most common mistake — and the one that hurts the most, because it compounds across the entire season. It goes like this: week one, you pick Manchester City at home to Nottingham Forest. Easy win, you think. Week two, Liverpool away at Wolves. Another banker. By week four, you've already burned City, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea. By week 14, you're picking Crystal Palace away at Spurs and crossing your fingers.

The problem isn't that those early picks were bad. It's that you didn't need to use those teams yet. In week one, you have 20 Premier League teams available. Brighton at home to Wolves would have done just fine. The question to ask before every pick isn't "which team is safest?" — it's "which team is safest that I can most afford to use right now?"

Save your top-tier teams for the rounds where you'd genuinely struggle without them. Those rounds always come.

2. Not Looking at the Fixture List Beyond This Week

A player who only looks at this week's fixtures is playing a completely different — and weaker — game than one who plans three to five rounds ahead. Before picking, always look at what fixtures are coming up in the next few weeks for the teams you're considering using now.

Suppose this week Aston Villa have a decent fixture away at Brentford, and next week they host relegated Luton. If you use them now, you lose that home banker next week. If another option is available this week — even a slightly less comfortable one — it might be worth taking the smaller risk to preserve the bigger reward.

Experienced LMS players essentially run a mental inventory: which teams have the easiest upcoming fixtures, which rounds are going to be brutal, and how to sequence their picks to ensure they always have something to work with.

3. Ignoring the Draw Rules

There are two common rule variants: draws are safe, or draws eliminate. This fundamentally changes which teams are good picks. If you're playing in a draw-eliminates competition and you keep backing mid-table sides known for grinding out 0–0s, you're going to lose a lot of picks to draws.

In draw-eliminates competitions, the maths change completely. A team that wins 55% and draws 20% of their games is actually only "safe" 55% of the time, not 75%. That changes the calculus significantly. You want teams with a high win rate specifically, not a high "points earned" rate.

Always check the Rules tab in your competition before your first pick. Forgetting this is an entirely avoidable mistake.

4. Missing the Deadline

This one is pure carelessness, but it eliminates more players than you'd expect. Round deadlines are usually set to the first fixture kickoff of the gameweek — which is often a Friday night or Saturday lunchtime game. If you're planning to pick on Saturday morning and the 12:30 fixture is your round's opener, you may have already missed it.

The solution is simple: submit early. As soon as the round opens and you've made a decision, submit. You can change your pick right up until the deadline if something changes — a team news update, an injury, a manager sacking. There is no benefit to waiting, and the cost of forgetting is elimination.

Most Last Man Standing platforms, including Kwick Picks, send pick reminders before the deadline. Enable notifications if you can.

5. Ignoring Team News

Football is a sport played by people, and people get injured, suspended, and rested. A team that looks nailed-on to win their fixture changes significantly if their first choice striker and holding midfielder are both out. Elite teams absorb squad rotation better than most, but it still matters — especially in cup weeks or when a team is in a run of fixtures.

Check team news on the Thursday or Friday before the weekend fixtures. Manager press conferences are usually published on those days and often include injury and selection updates. If a team you were planning to pick is rotating heavily for a league cup game, it might be worth switching to a fresh-looking alternative.

6. Picking Based on League Position Alone

League tables tell you where a team has been, not necessarily where they're going. A team sitting sixth in the table after an unbeaten eight-game run is a different proposition to the same team who sat sixth three weeks ago after their fifth consecutive draw. Current form matters enormously in short-run predictions.

Equally, a bottom-three team in a relegation scrap against a top-six side has a different motivation and mentality than the same fixture in November. Survival pressure makes teams dangerous. Some of the worst LMS results come from backing a comfortable mid-table side against a team desperately fighting to stay up.

Use league position as a starting point, not a conclusion.

7. Blindly Copying What Everyone Else Picks

If you can see the pick counts in your competition and 90% of players have backed the same team, there are two scenarios: if that team wins, nothing changes. But if they draw or lose, the entire field is gone — and you with them. You gain no competitive advantage from following the crowd.

Independent thinking creates asymmetric outcomes. If you pick a slightly riskier team that only 15% of the field has backed, and they win, you've survived while everyone else burned their obvious pick and you're now well-positioned relative to the field. Contrarian picks with reasonable underlying logic are often higher value in LMS than crowd picks.

This doesn't mean picking randomly against the grain. It means asking: "what does the field know that I might be missing, and what might I know that they're not pricing in?"

8. Not Using Multiple Entries Strategically

If your competition allows multiple entries and you use them all to back the same team every week, you might as well have entered once. Multiple entries are only valuable if you run different strategies across them.

A simple approach: entry one plays it conservative — always the most reliable home favourite available. Entry two plays strategically — saving big teams, planning ahead, managing the pool carefully. Entry three is your contrarian — deliberately backing the least popular credible pick. Over a long season, these strategies will diverge meaningfully. Some entries will survive rounds that others don't, and your expected number of entries still alive at any given round increases.

9. Panicking After a Near Miss

You pick Team A, they win 1–0, but concede an 88th-minute equaliser and you survive on 1–1 (draws are safe in your competition). The following week, you panic and use Man City at home to a bottom-half side because you need something "safe". Three weeks later, you have no big teams left.

Every pick is independent. Last week's close call does not increase the probability that this week's pick loses. Emotional reactions to near misses — burning strong picks unnecessarily, over-hedging — are a form of tilt that will hurt your long-term survival rate. Stick to the strategy.

10. Treating It as Pure Luck

Some players pick their favourite team every week. Some use a dartboard. Some just choose whichever name they see first. And they occasionally win — football is unpredictable enough that a lucky run can carry you far. But over a long competition, against a field of players who are thinking carefully, pure chance picks will consistently underperform strategic ones.

Last Man Standing rewards preparation. Checking fixtures, reading form, managing your team pool, thinking ahead — these behaviours shift the odds in your favour every week. That doesn't mean you'll always win. But it dramatically increases your expected survival rate across multiple competitions and multiple seasons.

The players who tend to run deep in multiple competitions aren't the luckiest — they're the ones making the best decisions with imperfect information, week after week.