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Playing Hattrick Masters

Written by Qualle36

A lot of people won't have much interest in the HT Masters, either because it doesn't have any impact on them or because they don't know much about it.

Right now it takes up quite a lot of my thinking time on Hattrick, so here I give a few of my thoughts on the tournament and what it means to me.

So I’ve been asked by the peeps behind HT press to give a flavour of what it’s like to play in the HT Masters.

Well, I guess first of all is the fact that despite its many critics, it’s actually a lot of fun to play in the Masters. The opportunity to line up against the other league and cup champions from around the world, and against some of the biggest teams in Hattrick in a truly competitive tournament is a great experience. It’s even better when you win some of those games, although there’s a good chance you’ll be reading this just after I’ve been knocked out of this season’s tournament!

So what else do the Masters mean, apart from fun?

More money, for a start. The gate receipts are split 50-50, which provides a welcome boost to the coffers. The big downside of course, is injuries. These do sadly, in my experience, happen frequently in Masters matches. I’ve seen many-a-teams league season ruined by a brutal encounter in the Masters.

This leads me on to the frequency of the games. Played in the middle of the season, twice a week, it can take up a reasonable amount of time if you take the competition seriously. Many of the teams will be completely unfamiliar, and a brief check is probably not enough. There have been plenty of occasions when a team has clearly not looked at their opposition, and it has cost them the game. Given that you can play four competitive games in five days, this does mean that you are effectively forced to log in every day, which fortunately isn’t a problem for me!

One of the key rule differences between the Masters and normal matches is that playing Match Of The Season (MOTS), or Playing It Cool (PIC), only has half the effect on Team Spirit (TS) after the game that it normally does. This does present the opportunity for some teams to MOTS all their Masters matches, and then PIC their league & cup games.

Although this can bring another problem. Most people want to do well in the Masters, and even with the reduced TS impact, going deep into the tournament can significantly hurt performance in the league and cup. Plenty of teams who have done well in the Masters have subsequently failed to qualify for the next seasons tournament due to being knocked out of the cup, and having poor league results, during the Masters tournament. Given that you have to either win the cup or the top division to qualify for it, there isn’t much margin for error.

The standard of teams that I might face can vary significantly. Most teams are fairly similar to mine, but there is always the chance that you might have to face an absolute beast of a team! There are quite a number of teams who are running a huge wage bill (perhaps around £1million a week!), purely in an effort to win the tournament. These teams are not concerned about sustainability, but simply want to put out the best set of players the HT world has to offer. Coming up against one of these presents a fairly major (but not insurmountable) problem!

My match on Thursday (against the Tunisian top division champions) is a great example of how difficult it is to predict how things will go. On the face of it I’m probably favourite, but he is capable of putting out a huge defence and has a squad salary close to mine, so I’m worried about underestimating him, particularly as he’s been putting out under-strength teams in recent weeks. I am fortunate that I have a PIC in the league on Sunday, so if I do manage to reach round three I’ll be going into it with maximum TS, which is something I’ve never been able to do before.

So finally, have I got any other overall thoughts? Well I do like playing in the Masters, even if I haven’t done particularly well so far. It’s by no means perfect, but unlike a lot of people who criticise the tournament, I struggle to see any significantly better solutions on how to set it up.

Playing against teams from around the world is great. It is something that I think we should all have the opportunity to do, and not just in friendlies. I’ve got plenty of ideas for how to improve the HT experience, but if I could choose just one, it might well be a huge end of season tournament across the whole world. Perhaps completely unrealistic, but it could just get a lot of people more interested in HT.

Cheers, and thanks for reading.

Pheosiris.