This is the one that catches out more coaches than anything else in the game, and it's the reason the schedule article came first.
The rule
A player's price does not move until he has played three games.
That's it. No price rise, no price drop, nothing — not after a 40-point opener, not after a 12-point clanger. The engine doesn't start until game three, because SuperCoach prices off a three-game rolling average. Until there are three games in the sample, there's no average to price off.
It's named the Henshall Rule after the season a lot of coaches watched Ben Henshall play a blinder in round 1 and then sat there wondering why nothing happened to his price.
Why it bites
Here's the trap in its purest form. Take a club whose opening schedule runs single, single, double.
- Round 1: your man drops a huge score. Price doesn't move — one game played.
- Round 2: solid game. Price still doesn't move — two games played.
- Round 3: he plays twice. After his third game, his price finally moves… off games 1, 2 and 3. Then after his fourth game, game 1 drops out of the rolling window entirely.
So that monster round 1 score contributes to exactly one price update before it's gone. If the rest of his output has been ordinary, you've captured almost none of the value you thought you were buying.
The same thing happens in reverse and it's just as important: a player who starts badly doesn't get punished immediately either. If you panic-trade a premium after two bad games, you've sold at a price that hasn't yet fallen — and you've handed the recovery to someone else.
The rounds that matter most
Because clubs start the season with different numbers of games — byes, uneven draws, and any NBL x NBA or international fixtures — different clubs hit their third game in different rounds.
That gap is the single biggest exploitable edge available in the first month of the season.
A club with a heavy opening schedule might be through three games by the end of round 2. A club that opens on a bye and then plays singles might not get there until round 4 or round 5. Which means:
- For those first few rounds, players from the fast-starting clubs are the only players in the game whose prices can move.
- Every dollar of cash generation available in that window belongs to them.
- Players from the slow-starting clubs are, for pricing purposes, frozen — no matter how well they play.
How to actually use it
Load your cash cows onto the fast starters. If your rookies are on clubs that don't hit three games until round 4, you have wasted three rounds of cash generation you can never get back. Rookies belong on clubs that get to game three first.
The first price jump is the biggest. A rookie's opening price is set conservatively. The first move — the one that happens when his three-game average is compared against a bargain-basement starting price — is almost always his single biggest rise of the season. Own him for it. That one jump is worth more than the next three combined.
Use the freeze as a buy window. Players on slow-starting clubs can't rise, which means the market ignores them. If a premium on one of those clubs is playing well but priced as though he isn't, you're getting him at a discount the pricing engine simply hasn't caught up to yet. Get in before his third game, not after.
Don't panic in the first fortnight. A bad round 1 from a premium is not a sell signal. His price literally cannot have fallen yet. You have time.
Watch the fixture quirks. Any club with an unusual opening — a bye, a mid-week international commitment, a rescheduled game — is a club whose price-change date is different from everyone else's. Those are exactly the clubs worth checking manually rather than assuming.
The pre-season worksheet
Before the season starts, write down for all ten clubs: the round in which they play their third game. Sort the list. That sorted list is your cash-generation priority order for the opening month, and it will be more useful to you than any player ranking.