Players we don't know

Hello and welcome to the community @Trickyvicki68 !

Yes, the weekly race has annoyed many here in the community and most of us agree with you on this. What happens in this event is that you mostly play against players on your friends list, but there is at least one other player to each of our weekly races so King can control the event better: King don't want us to win easily every week, so if we are doing well they will put in a player who is doing much better than us. I do think this event could do with a fix though, because I have seen posts from players whose opposition is so way ahead that it is disheartening rather than challenging! It is an event fixed by King because they pick the players you are up against. In fact the friends you play against have different opposition from you. So if you are playing against Jack then Jack will probably not be playing against you at all, but against some other players.

Hi @Trickyvicki68, I would say please don't get caught up by the tricks that King play. Candy Crush is, at its heart, a single player game and all of the features are not what they seem. The Weekly Contest is a good example of how King play tricks on their players. The only person that wins anything from the Weekly Contest in your game is you. That is, when you have a player shown as number one in your Weekly Contest it doesn't mean that they get to win all of the first place boosters and it also doesn't mean that they see you in their Weekly Contest. It also means that the people shown in second and third place in your Weekly Contest don't necessarily receive the rewards shown in your race as in their Race they might not even be in a winning position.

The whole purpose of the Weekly Contest and a lot of the game's features is to get you to care enough to pay your way to victory. Don't fall for it and just play your game is the best advice. Yes the boosters are helpful, but please don't let the loss of them ruin the game for you.

It started afresh yesterday and the leader is already on 112 wins. 

The Weekly Contest resets at midnight GMT, so depending on where you are in the world some players can be awake and playing the game before you even open your game.

If you are always seeing the same players week after week one thing you can try is not playing for a week. Just open your game to collect any free boosters that are on offer, but don't play any new levels. Sometimes this can work to 'reset' your player base.

Well atm I don't have any of my friends playing they are all people I don't know.

Have you got many friends in your list Vicki?

Hi @Trickyvicki68 if you really only have ten friends in your list that would explain why your Weekly Contest has so many strangers in it. I would hazard a guess that whatever coding routine they use for the Weekly Contest requires a population larger than ten to work correctly. Having just ten forces the game to add more players in order for it to work correctly.