How The Trade Value Chart Actually Works In Practice
The Dave Richard Trade Value Chart is a fantasy football tool that assigns point values to players based on their tier and position. It was developed by Dave Richard during his time at ESPN and has been widely adopted across fantasy platforms since around 2014. The core concept is simple enough: each position gets a total pool of points, and each tier within that position gets a slice of those points. Running backs and wide receivers carry more weight than tight ends and quarterbacks because of their depth in typical leagues. Here is the actual breakdown most people use. Running backs get 25 points for a top-tier RB1, then 20, 15, 10, 5, and 2 for subsequent tiers. Wide receivers follow the same structure. Quarterbacks start at 10 for tier 1 and drop off more gradually because the position is shallower. Tight ends begin at 5 and go from there. Kickers and defensive units are worth almost nothing in most implementations, usually starting at 1 or 2 points for tier 1.
Unraveling The Secrets Of The Dave Richard Trade Value Chart A Comprehensive Guide
The first thing people miss when they look at this chart is that it is not about individual player names. It is about tiers. You are not trading Derrick Henry for Dalvin Cook because they have the same number next to their name. You are trading a tier 1 running back for a tier 1 running back. The chart does not care that one might be coming off an injury or the other plays in a better offensive system. It only cares about the tier and the position. To use it, you need to know what tier every player on your roster currently sits at. That means consulting a recent top-150 or top-200 ranking list, ideally from late August or early September when sleepers and busts have sorted themselves out. If you are trying to use this chart in November, the tier assignments will be completely wrong because bye weeks, injuries, and breakout candidates change everything. The chart was designed as a pre-season evaluation tool, not a mid-season adjustment system. I ran into a specific problem last year that took me about twenty minutes to figure out. I was evaluating a trade where my opponent offered me a tier 2 wide receiver and a tier 3 running back for my tier 2 running back and tier 3 wide receiver. On paper the numbers looked identical. Both sides had the same total point value. But the chart does not account for league scoring settings. My league is PPR while my opponent runs half-point PPR. That tier 3 wide receiver I was giving up was worth significantly more in my format because of the extra catch points he accumulates weekly. The chart told me the trade was even. It was not. I ended up using a quick adjustment by taking the projected PPR points difference between half-PPR and full PPR for those two players and adding roughly 3 to 4 equity points to my side of the trade before calling it fair. Without that adjustment I would have taken a bad deal.
Another thing the chart silently assumes is that you are in a standard six-team to ten-team league with standard starting lineups. If you play in a superflex league where quarterbacks are starter-equal to running backs, the entire point distribution for quarterbacks is wrong. The original chart values QB1 at 10 points. In superflex that should probably be closer to 20 or 22. There is no official superflex adaptation from Dave Richard himself that I have seen, which is why a lot of superflex managers just ignore the chart entirely and use ADP-based valuation instead.
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The Practical Workflow
What I actually do when I am evaluating a trade is fairly mechanical. I write down every player involved, look up their tier from the most recent ESPN projection update, multiply that tier by its position point value, and add it up. If the numbers are within about 3 points of each other I call it a fair trade. More than that and one side is clearly overpaying. I do not spend more than five minutes on this unless the trade involves four or more players, in which case I also factor in positional scarcity for the current week. There is a shortcut most people do not know about. You do not need to memorize the tier values. Several fantasy sites publish the chart directly, and some even have built-in trade analyzers that auto-assign tiers based on their rankings. The problem with relying on the built-in analyzer is that the tier cutoffs are updated on different schedules. One site might have already dropped a player to a lower tier after a bad game while another has not. Always cross-check the tier assignment against at least one other source before finalizing your evaluation. This usually saves about ten minutes of back-and-forth during deadline day when everything moves fast.
Where The Chart Falls Apart
The chart has real blind spots. It treats all tier 1 running backs as equal value regardless of matchup, schedule difficulty, or injury status. It does not factor in bye week overlap. If you are trading away a tier 1 running back who has a bye in week 4 and week 12 while receiving a tier 1 running back with no byes until week 15, the chart says it is even. It is not. The calendar matters more than the tier in those cases. It also completely ignores roster construction. If you already have four running backs and your trade partner has only two, acquiring another running back through a trade that looks even on the chart is a poor move. You are stacking a position you do not need while weakening your depth elsewhere. The chart will not tell you that. It only tells you whether the raw player values match. You have to bring your own context into it. For leagues that use start-em-all or ultra-deep formats with eighteen or more rosters, the tier system breaks down further because there are too many viable players at each position for the tier model to capture accurately. In those cases I switch to a simple points-per-game projection model instead. I take each player's average fantasy points per game from the first four to six weeks, multiply by remaining games, and compare total projected output. It is less elegant but it accounts for actual production rather than perceived value.
What You Need To Make It Work
You need three things. First, access to a current tier chart. The ESPN version is the most commonly referenced and updates weekly during the season. Second, a consistent reference point for what tier each of your players currently occupies. Third, the discipline to ignore your emotional attachment to a player when the numbers say something else. The chart will tell you that keeping your favorite tight end while trading away a clearly superior running back is a bad deal even if you really like that tight end. That is the whole point of having an objective framework in the first place. I check the chart once before the season starts to set my initial trade strategy and then again around weeks six through eight when the tier landscape has shifted significantly from the preseason projections. Between those checkpoints I rely on my own observation of player performance rather than the chart, since the tier assignments lag behind real-time production. This combination of structured evaluation and informal tracking cuts my trade decision time from roughly an hour down to about fifteen minutes per offer, which matters when you have multiple trade requests to evaluate in a single afternoon.
