I'm not sure about the crooked Commissioner angle. I think this is more a lazy players scenario. They don't want to have to do their homework. They want to rely more on luck of the draw than in draft preparation. Of course, it could be both a crooked Commish and lazy owners.
Normally I like your posts, but I hate this whole mindset that "Anything that's not a normal rule is a guppy rule written by guppies for guppies to increase the luck factor!"When last I checked, everyone in the league was still bound by the same rule. When last I checked, everyone in the league had just as much opportunity to take advantage of it as everyone else. To be honest, the only "guppy thinking" going on in this thread is all of the "sharks" immediately dismissing the rule out of hand as "weak" or "stupid". The *REAL* shark move would be to think about how they could use this rule to their advantage- because that's really what every rule is, an opportunity to gain an advantage over someone who doesn't understand the rule as well as you do. I love *ALL* rules because that just means more opportunity for me to take advantage of fools who, like you, are too busy dismissing the rule to consider its merits.
Just joined another league at work. 10 team league, starts qb, 2 rb, 2 wr, te, dl, lb, db, & k. 20 round draft.Here's the twist: you can't draft any backups until you draft a full starting lineup. For example, if you draft 2 rb's with your first 2 picks, you have to wait until at least the 11th round to draft another one. You are thus forced to draft even a kicker in the first 10 rounds (I'll be doing that in the 10th round, obviously).And to make things even more complex, each team only gets like 5 waiver wire transactions the whole season.As far as strategy goes, I'm treating this as 2 separate drafts. For the "first draft," which lasts the first 10 rounds, I'm thinking I'll generally just take the best available player that I have a starting spot in the lineup still available for. For the "second draft" I'll just take the best available player and add the necessary depth I need for certain positions in the later rounds. Anyone else have any other ideas?
I play in several leagues with "positional limits" to the draft (you have to draft 4 QBs, 6 RBs, 6 WRs, 2 TEs, 2 PKs, 2 Defs), which is similar to what's going on here, and I can tell you that there's a lot of gamesmanship involved. For instance, right off the bat, I'd say that your instinct to take a kicker in the 10th is a BAD instinct. You know who you should be taking in the 10th round? Your #2 RB, that's who. Why? Well, because most people are going to be getting a top-20 RB in the 2nd round because they don't understand the rule, while you are absolutely GUARANTEED a top-24 RB in the 10th round (very likely a top-20 RB, since you know there are going to be four people who go off the board and draft RBs who aren't in your top-23). The choice now becomes do you want to draft someone in the RB16 range in the 2nd round, or would you rather draft RB20 in the 10th round? This rule increases the value of the studs at every position, meaning RB/Manning/Gates or Manning/RB/Gates is actually one of the true standout strategies in a league with this setup (you still get two top-20 RBs, and getting Manning/Gates on top of that is positively crushing). Hell, I'd even be tempted to go Manning/Smith/Gates, or Smith/Chad Johnson/Gates. If you have the Draft Dominator, change the VBD Baseline from "Joe's Secret Formula" to "Worst Starter" and notice what it does to the VBD values- WR's jump up through the roof, RBs fall down through the floor, and the studs at all the other positions are all worth a top-3 round selection (I just plugged it in using standard FBGs scoring and it has Manning 6th, Gates 9th, and Chicago's defense 18th overall). Really, Worst Starter is the VBD baseline you should be using during the first 10 rounds- Joe's Secret Formula is an adjustment designed to take into account how many of the top 100 players taken will be at each position, but that's unnecessary here, because there's no speculation involved- we know EXACTLY how many WRs will be taken in the first 120 picks.So, anyway, long story short... grab an uberstud RB if you're at the top of the first round, but otherwise, ignore RBs and take advantage of the fact that your leaguemates are going to be slow to adapt by filling up your roster with uberstuds at every other position while still landing two top-20 RBs in the meantime. I mean, imagine drafting at the #8 spot and going Peyton Manning, Antonio Gates, Javon Walker, Lee Evans, Chicago, Adam Vinatieri, Jerricho Cotchery, Edgerrin James, Thomas Jones (obviously you'd do it differently since your league is 2-WR and IDP, but I'm just illustrating a point).Also, another tip- pay attention to how many of each player have been drafted. Once everyone else in your league fills up on one position, then ignore that position until round 10. For an extreme example, if you drafted first, and everyone in the league went RB-RB in the first two rounds, then when it got back to you you'd know that you aren't going to touch an RB until round 10, because you know that no more will be drafted no matter what. This leads to a bit of gamesmanship where, if you and another guy are the last people to fill a position, you have to decide whether you want to fill it now or just wait until the other guy fills it first and grab your guy in the 10th round, instead.One other suggestion- if you can, try to increase the number of starters so there's an odd number of rounds, because otherwise the person with the #1 overall pick is also getting the #1 pick of the "second draft", as you called it. That means the Tomlinson owner isn't just guaranteed Tomlinson, he can also go WR/TE at the 2-3 turn, then go QB/WR at 4-5, and he'll still wind up with two additional top-25 backs (in addition to Tomlinson), guaranteed. If he's picking first in the "first draft", he should be picking last in the "second draft", and since most league owners probably wouldn't understand that, it'd be easier increasing your starters than it would be trying to sell your fellow owners on an 11th-round-reversal.Anyway, that is the *REAL* "shark way" to approach this rule. Whining about rules is for guppies only, taking advantage of rules and using them to dominate the competition is what being a shark is all about.