I had a spreadsheet of my top 200 players, position tiers in another tab, and a mental list of \u201cdon\u2019t forget\u201d picks that I knew I\u2019d definitely forget \u2013 but for the first time in my seven-year Fantasy Premier League Draft career, I hadn’t followed off-season transfer news, and with my draft just days away, I was panicking.<\/p>\n
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Eight managers, 15 picks each, snake draft format, chaos was coming. Then it hit me: what if I could build my own draft program?<\/p>\n
There was just one problem: I don\u2019t know how to code.<\/p>\n
My AI assistant coach<\/p>\n You probably read that intro and thought to yourself, what even is Fantasy Premier League Draft? And to be honest, I wouldn’t blame you. The Premier League, the world’s most popular club football competition, plays host to one of the most popular online fantasy games around: Official Fantasy Premier League<\/a>.<\/p>\n Millions of players select their favorite footballers before the start of the season and compete against friends based on the athletes’ real-world performance. The issue with this game mode is that everyone owns the same players, and more often than not, friends will lose interest a couple of months into the season, rendering it all a little frustrating and a bit, dare I say it, boring.<\/p>\n Nestled into a menu on the same website is the far less popular Draft version of Fantasy Premier League, similar to US fantasy football. This offers users the chance to select players pre-season and to be the only one in the league to “own” them. So there’s only one Mohammed Salah, one Erling Haaland, and ultimately one winner.<\/p>\n If you’ve ever competed in a live fantasy draft, you know the pain. Someone picks a player, you scramble to cross them off your list, and by the time you’re ready, your 90-second turn is already underway and you’re in danger of missing out on a bargain.<\/p>\n Existing tools to make my life easier and help me grab the right players were either locked behind subscriptions, weren’t simple enough for what I wanted, or were just completely unavailable. So I needed to find a solution \u2013 and what better way than to try the new OpenAI model, GPT-5.<\/p>\n ChatGPT Canvas<\/p>\n (Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n I had never “vibe coded” with ChatGPT before; in fact, I had never coded at all in my life. But after Sam Altman and co’s GPT-5 presentation<\/a>, I thought it was the perfect time to test the new powers of the latest AI model.<\/p>\n My first prompt was basically a wish list:<\/p>\n \u201cMake me an interactive web program where I can click on a player\u2019s name to mark them as picked, colour-code by position, and track picks for eight teams in a snake draft.\u201d<\/p>\n It worked, albeit in a pretty basic way, so I continued to chat with ChatGPT to refine the concept and make a program that was not only nice to look at but also efficient for the task at hand.<\/p>\n I asked ChatGPT to add color coding to each individual position, to import the data with my 200 ranked players from the Google Sheet I had created the night prior, and even display team crests next to each athlete.<\/p>\n My ChatGPT-built Fantasy Premier League Draft tool (Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n Each time I asked the AI to make an adjustment, it went away and changed the code right in front of my eyes. Considering I had never even attempted ‘coding’ before, I was seriously impressed with how simple it all was.<\/p>\n Fast forward 40 minutes, and I had a fully functional Fantasy Premier League Draft program that I could use to track the live draft and tick off players from my wishlist as other users selected them.<\/p>\n Draft day and beyond<\/p>\n Draft day came and went, and thanks to ChatGPT, I didn’t panic when the 90-second selection timer popped up on screen. Every time it was my turn to select a player, I had the whole list of available ones cross-checked with my rankings right in front of my eyes.<\/p>\n This was a revelation for me; this simple program \u2013 that I created simply by explaining the problem \u2013 was able to solve an issue that had plagued the seven years I’ve played this slightly niche game, and I was over the moon.<\/p>\n ChatGPT doesn’t have a magic \u201cbuild exactly what I am picturing\u201d button; you still need to be precise with instructions and to test the results. But it is surprisingly capable of turning a non-coder\u2019s idea into something usable within hours.<\/p>\n My final team. Don’t judge me (Image credit: Future)<\/p>\n For me, the real win was not just that I had a draft tool tailored to my league, it was the realization that I can now build things I used to think were out of reach.<\/p>\n While this article has been focused on fantasy football, it’s only an example of the powers of AI if you can describe what you need from it. GPT-5 might not be the best AI for coding<\/a> and I’ll need to try other models now to see what the competition is capable of \u2013 but AI in general has the prowess to bring ideas to life. And I think that’s pretty magical.<\/p>\n The Premier League season starts this weekend, so let’s hope my draft day decisions were good ones. After all, I still think I’m more knowledgeable about sport than ChatGPT.<\/p>\n![\"ChatGPT](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/iMKGJwDf3LRKakHN5eRRGC.jpg\")
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