The rule
Pick one captain and one vice-captain from your starting XI before the deadline. The captain's points are **doubled**. If the captain plays zero minutes, the vice-captain is promoted automatically and his points are doubled instead. If both play zero minutes, nobody doubles.
Why it dominates everything else
Across a season the captaincy is worth more than every transfer decision combined. A good captain call adds 8-12 points in a week; a bad one costs the same. Getting the transfers slightly wrong and the captain consistently right beats the reverse, every time.
Vice-captain is not a throwaway pick
Name a vice who actually starts. The most common self-inflicted disaster in FPL is captaining a player who is benched at 11am and having a vice-captain who is also benched — so the double lands on nobody. Your vice should be a nailed starter, ideally in a different fixture from your captain.
Triple Captain
The Triple Captain chip makes your captain score **triple** instead of double, once per season. It is best saved for a premium attacker in a double gameweek — two fixtures, tripled — rather than spent on a single good home tie.