Sorare: a strategy for growing

By The Very Confused Martin Babalor | My journey to 1 Bitcoin | 20 Nov 2023

I’ve always been passionate about applications of blockchain technology that provide something besides finance.I find it much easier to interact with protocols and apps built for things such as art, social relations, and gaming, that have a real impact on my life and a real use case, (that might even be entertainment.)

Speaking of gaming, there’s no doubt my two gems on the blockchain are Splinterlands and Sorare. The first one is simply the best blockchain game to play, the second one puts together a lot: a passion for sports, fantasy sports, stats, and much more.

Both of these projects are constantly being developed, and one of the key aspects of being able to earn through them is to keep yourself updated on the latest features.

This might sound easy, but it’s definitely not: on Splinterlands you’ll have to take a deep dive into a complex economic system. At the same time, on Sorare you’ll need to be updated on the way tournaments are organized and the latest sports trends to understand where opportunities are.

Sorare: a strategy for maximizing opportunities

I’ve always considered these two mostly as a game rather than an investment: my goal was always to take something out of the system without investing too much.

That’s part of the game: if you are clever enough and put in a little effort, you can find ways to maximize your investments and start having fun for free.

I almost quit Sorare a few months ago because I had no time to invest and I felt I was going nowhere. When I restarted a few weeks ago I found a much-improved game: now there’s NBA, MLS, and football.

I immediately focused on football, because that's the sport I know the best and I can see good deals on the market and opportunities coming.

The easiest competition: Kickoff tournaments

In theory, a Sorare player could build an empire starting from nothing, even without a single penny investment. By participating in the free tournaments, you can win limited cards, sell them on the market, buy new cards, and start your journey.

Speaking facts, it’s really hard to do so: free tournaments are full of players, and only the first 200 players get these cards. Not many, if you consider that you can regularly see 80.000 players participating.

On top of that, all the players can use the same free cards that you can scout, acquire and dismiss only based on a team cap. So if you start now, you'll probably start ahead of someone who started weeks ago, choose the right players and trade them when they increase their value.

The opportunity that I saw, and that worked immediately, is that it is much easier to win a limited card if you participate in a Kickoff tournament. These tournaments (there’s a few of them, one for every major league around Europe) are for players who hold less than 10 limited cards and are intended to help them get in the game and grow their collection.

That means that if you own even a single limited card, you can participate in one of these tournaments.

These tournaments are way easier to win, as the normal number of participants is around 5000. You can play a five card team made of 4 free regular cards and a limited one.

The cool part is that you can find cards of good players, if you know how to scout them, for very good prices. So if you buy a limited card of a player for each big tournament (Serie A, Premier League, Bundesliga, Spanish Liga, and French Ligue 1), you’ll be able to enter 5 of these Kickoff tournaments for a very good price (under 10$).

Here’s my rule to scout useful players:

you don’t need champions like Haland, Mappe or Kane (remember you can use free cards of these players). You just need someone cheap that plays regularly.
Focus on young players. They might not play a lot immediately, but they will in the future
Keep an eye on injuries: sometimes you can get very good deals when a player is injured

My strategy by now is working super well. By buying a single card (Giangiacomo Magnani from Hellas Verona, bought for under 2$) I was able to reach 5th place in the kickoff tournaments and win a limited card worth more than 20$ (Luis Alberto from SS Lazio). I will now use this card as a player for a few weeks, and maybe sell it later to participate in more Kickoff tournaments.