I helped advise my sister Lily on her auction draft tonight. Her husband John is also participating in the league, but his brother who serves as his usual advisor couldn't make it so I was a partial consultant for him. The draft used fantasyauctioneer.com website, and the draft started inauspiciously when the first person nominating couldn't send a player for bidding. We discovered after a few minutes that the system forced you to manually enter an initial bid amount when you select a player for bidding, instead of automatically setting the starting bid at $1.
Basic rules: The salary cap was $200, 12-team league. Nominations proceeded in snake fashion and there were unlimited rounds as long as people had roster spots to fill. Lily mistakenly thought the league starts 2 WRs, but it turned out that you need to start 3 WRs. Also, only 5 bench players though the draftroom showed 6, which of course, created a snafu at the end when people started filling the 6th spot. I don't know the exact scoring system but was told it was pretty standard yardage league stuff though QBs only get 1 pt per 50 passing yards like in FADUCO.
Strategy going into the draft: After reading several guides to auction drafting, Lily and I agreed we should try the "3 Studs & the rest sleepers" approach. We'd nominate overrated players or positions whom we didn't need to flush people of their money, and would wait out the middle period and close strong. Of course, this was before we found out we had to start 3 WRs. Oh well, we did manage to catch a big break midway through the draft. (more on that later). Lily also had a nice Excel spreadsheet from that auction site that listed the average and min/max values of players recorded in previous drafts on the site so far, though that was pretty much public information available to anyone in the league who bothered to download the spreadsheet.
Recap of Draft: We shot out the gates, grabbing Ladanian Tomlinson for $76 after Larry Johnson went for $79. Shaun Alexander soon went for $78. We then went after the first WR nominated, and $44 later, TO was ours baby! Then a minor snafu. Donovan McNabb was nominated and my sister while trying to move screens around accidentally clicked the "+1 Bid" button and we were "stuck" with McNabb at $21, which was on the slightly high end of the price range. At this point we were done with serious bidding for a while.
The pace of the auction draft is very fast, far more intense than a normal draft. You only have like 3 seconds to put your bid in or raise the bid, and you have to be alert for the timing of the nominee getting on the board since a person can take 1 second to 30 seconds to put up a player for bidding. So there isn't much down time to consult the sheets, magazines, other websites, etc. It's easy to make mistakes, like the guy who bid on Eli Manning thinking it was Peyton and another guy who "won" his 2nd QB at a pretty penny only to discover that his QBs had the same bye. I count myself fortunate that we didn't really screw up our bye weeks, though both LT and TO are off in week 3.
After waiting out the next like 6-7 rounds, after John and Lily nominated players whom we didn't want to trim other people's money, the bankroll finally was superior to most teams'. By this time, most of the "name" #1 WRs were taken. This was when I discovered the system did not have Roy Williams in the player pool, and no one had nominated him. Fortunately, the system allows you to draft "write-in" candidates and so we managed to get Roy Williams as a "write-in" for $19 with our strong bankroll.
We intended to exploit our high stack, to use a poker analogy, by grabbing both Carolina backs. We got Deshaun Foster for $10 but opted out of the bidding when someone bidded for Deangelo Williams for $9, since that would knock the guy out from competitive bidding for the rest of the draft. Mistake #2. At that point, both Tennessee RBs were also available, so we thought no problem, we'll go with Plan B. Mistake #3. When Lendale White got nominated, my sister used the "+1 Bid" button instead of just putting in a strong figure of like $4 to scare off bidders. Someone raised him to $5 and the system lagged out before Lily could hit the "+1 Bid". Aargh! We later got Chris Brown but now our #2 RB position is filled with 2 injury-prone RBs instead of an investment in Carolina's or Tennessee's running game. We were thrown off our game afterwards, and eventually ended up with some extra money that we blew on the Defense and Kicker position. Damn lag!
Lessons learned: For you poker players, auction drafting is somewhat like poker in managing your chips. High stacks can push people around, and there are times to bid aggressively and other times to play tight. I found out the most important extra window to open is not the teams' roster of players drafted, but the one that shows how much money people have left to bid. Be careful when moving your cursor near the "+1 Bid" button!
Despite these mistakes that serve as a learning opportunity, we ended up with a decent roster in my opinion. It certainly isn't a clearcut winner with many unknowns three weeks before the season starts, and our bench RBs have a precarious health history. Originally, there is to be only 5 bench players instead of 6, but because of the draft, there may be some debate and arguments passed back and forth to keep the current roster size. This is the league that keeps on changing its scoring system drastically every year, sometimes in mid-year, so rules screwups are expected.
Here is the team after all the madness:
QB: Donovan McNabb ($21)
RB: LaDanlian Tomlinson ($79)
RB: DeShaun Foster ($10)
WR: Terrell Owens ($44)
WR: Roy Williams ($19)
WR: Kevin Curtis ($3)
TE: Jason Witten ($3)
K: Ryan Longwell ($2)
DST: Jacksonville Jaguars ($2)
B-QB: Jon Kitna ($2)
B-RB: Chris Brown ($4)
B-RB: Ryan Moats ($3)
B-WR: Matt Jones ($6)
B-WR: Antonio Bryant ($2)
B-TE: Heath Miller ($3)
Basic rules: The salary cap was $200, 12-team league. Nominations proceeded in snake fashion and there were unlimited rounds as long as people had roster spots to fill. Lily mistakenly thought the league starts 2 WRs, but it turned out that you need to start 3 WRs. Also, only 5 bench players though the draftroom showed 6, which of course, created a snafu at the end when people started filling the 6th spot. I don't know the exact scoring system but was told it was pretty standard yardage league stuff though QBs only get 1 pt per 50 passing yards like in FADUCO.
Strategy going into the draft: After reading several guides to auction drafting, Lily and I agreed we should try the "3 Studs & the rest sleepers" approach. We'd nominate overrated players or positions whom we didn't need to flush people of their money, and would wait out the middle period and close strong. Of course, this was before we found out we had to start 3 WRs. Oh well, we did manage to catch a big break midway through the draft. (more on that later). Lily also had a nice Excel spreadsheet from that auction site that listed the average and min/max values of players recorded in previous drafts on the site so far, though that was pretty much public information available to anyone in the league who bothered to download the spreadsheet.
Recap of Draft: We shot out the gates, grabbing Ladanian Tomlinson for $76 after Larry Johnson went for $79. Shaun Alexander soon went for $78. We then went after the first WR nominated, and $44 later, TO was ours baby! Then a minor snafu. Donovan McNabb was nominated and my sister while trying to move screens around accidentally clicked the "+1 Bid" button and we were "stuck" with McNabb at $21, which was on the slightly high end of the price range. At this point we were done with serious bidding for a while.
The pace of the auction draft is very fast, far more intense than a normal draft. You only have like 3 seconds to put your bid in or raise the bid, and you have to be alert for the timing of the nominee getting on the board since a person can take 1 second to 30 seconds to put up a player for bidding. So there isn't much down time to consult the sheets, magazines, other websites, etc. It's easy to make mistakes, like the guy who bid on Eli Manning thinking it was Peyton and another guy who "won" his 2nd QB at a pretty penny only to discover that his QBs had the same bye. I count myself fortunate that we didn't really screw up our bye weeks, though both LT and TO are off in week 3.
After waiting out the next like 6-7 rounds, after John and Lily nominated players whom we didn't want to trim other people's money, the bankroll finally was superior to most teams'. By this time, most of the "name" #1 WRs were taken. This was when I discovered the system did not have Roy Williams in the player pool, and no one had nominated him. Fortunately, the system allows you to draft "write-in" candidates and so we managed to get Roy Williams as a "write-in" for $19 with our strong bankroll.
We intended to exploit our high stack, to use a poker analogy, by grabbing both Carolina backs. We got Deshaun Foster for $10 but opted out of the bidding when someone bidded for Deangelo Williams for $9, since that would knock the guy out from competitive bidding for the rest of the draft. Mistake #2. At that point, both Tennessee RBs were also available, so we thought no problem, we'll go with Plan B. Mistake #3. When Lendale White got nominated, my sister used the "+1 Bid" button instead of just putting in a strong figure of like $4 to scare off bidders. Someone raised him to $5 and the system lagged out before Lily could hit the "+1 Bid". Aargh! We later got Chris Brown but now our #2 RB position is filled with 2 injury-prone RBs instead of an investment in Carolina's or Tennessee's running game. We were thrown off our game afterwards, and eventually ended up with some extra money that we blew on the Defense and Kicker position. Damn lag!
Lessons learned: For you poker players, auction drafting is somewhat like poker in managing your chips. High stacks can push people around, and there are times to bid aggressively and other times to play tight. I found out the most important extra window to open is not the teams' roster of players drafted, but the one that shows how much money people have left to bid. Be careful when moving your cursor near the "+1 Bid" button!
Despite these mistakes that serve as a learning opportunity, we ended up with a decent roster in my opinion. It certainly isn't a clearcut winner with many unknowns three weeks before the season starts, and our bench RBs have a precarious health history. Originally, there is to be only 5 bench players instead of 6, but because of the draft, there may be some debate and arguments passed back and forth to keep the current roster size. This is the league that keeps on changing its scoring system drastically every year, sometimes in mid-year, so rules screwups are expected.
Here is the team after all the madness:
QB: Donovan McNabb ($21)
RB: LaDanlian Tomlinson ($79)
RB: DeShaun Foster ($10)
WR: Terrell Owens ($44)
WR: Roy Williams ($19)
WR: Kevin Curtis ($3)
TE: Jason Witten ($3)
K: Ryan Longwell ($2)
DST: Jacksonville Jaguars ($2)
B-QB: Jon Kitna ($2)
B-RB: Chris Brown ($4)
B-RB: Ryan Moats ($3)
B-WR: Matt Jones ($6)
B-WR: Antonio Bryant ($2)
B-TE: Heath Miller ($3)
Comments
Thank God for Victor advising me - I would have gotten the entire Philly team somehow. Vic also kept me from being reckless. I was hovering around the bid button during some crazy bidding wars. I was then banned from putting the cursor near the bid button. Really - a lot like poker. Some folks seemed like they were always all-in.