Blended Auction/Serpentine draft (1 Viewer)

[the next level]

I "invented" a blended auction/serpentine draft scheme two years ago that has withstood the test of two years use and I feel compelled to share about it because it has proven for all parties to be their best fantasy football experience bar none. I know we're not the only ones out there using a blend, but I think some of the details are unique.

I manage a 16-team league and we have a live draft every year with 100% attendance for 6 years running. To open the draft, we auction off 32-players. We all draw numbers out of a hat from which an order is established for team owners to nominate players to be auctioned. Each nomination must be accompanied by an established minimum bid (to encourage nomination of "blue chip" players in our limited auction and avoid auctioning 'worthless' players such as kickers and/or Dallas Cowboys). Every team owner thus gets two nomination opportunities but we do the nomination and subsequent auction one at a time. There is strategy involved in who to nominate, particularly as we get close to the 32nd player. Each team owner starts with $200 of pretend money. All of them are cognizant of two reasons to save some money: 1) The remaining balance will be their blind bid money for free agent acquisitions for the entire fantasy season. 2) At the end of the auction, whoever has the most money remaining gets the first pick of the serpentine and the rest of the serpentine order is likewise established from most to least auction money remaining. We then move on to 14 rounds of standard serpentine drafting.

I was terrified the first time we tried this that I had overlooked some hole in the rules (and they are much more detailed than the paragraph above) and that the draft would be a mess. On the contrary, it works brilliantly and my veteran group of fantasy players rave about the experience. It combines the best of both worlds: now everyone has a shot at the best players and conversely we don't waste so much time as a typical straight auction-draft does on the bidding process for the middle and lower-tiered players. Plus, the various angles of our auction scheme make for an incredibly intense experience. There's just so many variables to manage and scenarios to scheme for - especially in the environment where the auctioneer is about to bang the gavel on a star player and you're trying to process all the implications of continuing the bidding. Finally, there's no magazine or website to coach you through preparing for this kind of draft. It's one of the key reasons it's proven so popular: we all recognize just how much we are on our own when it comes to assessing player values and predicting how it's all going to play out. That's a very appealing challenge to a bunch of self-professed hardcore fantasy addicts.

There are, however, two major drawbacks. First, live attendance is practically compulsory. There's no way I know of short of online teleconferencing to pull off this system. And that leads to the second drawback - it compels me to do a lot of manual entries after the draft. There's no "Blended" draft option that I know of on any of the fantasy websites. And therein lies the selfish motive for this post: I'd love to see this scheme grow into an option used widely enough that perhaps someday there can be an online option with automatic tracking.

I look forward to your critique, commentary, and questions. No apologies for the Cowboys dig, I just can't resist.

 

[ddarroch4]

This looks pretty sweet. I think I'm going to try this. But instead of only 32 players I think we might fill up our starting line-ups, then a snake draft, then the remaining budget for free agents. Or how do you think just having $200 for an auction and a free agent budget would work out?

 

[Mainevent]

What if one person wins say 4 players in the auction, and a couple people only win 1... what kind of roster limitations are there, because after 14 rounds of serpentine one team will have 18 players, and others 15?

Interesting concept, but it seems like you'd want to get as many of the 32 auctions guys as possible, and then draft your 14 guys and there is less of a need to have blind bid $$... how do you settle ties (ie. two people use all their money during the auction) for draft order?

 

[ckl81]

This sounds like a great system. In our league, we seriously considered doing something very similar, but for 24 players (12 team league), then snake. I thought it would work well, but I'm glad to see that the actual implementation can be successful.

Mainevent, in our keeper league, we are allowed to keep as many players we want, so long as their point totals from last year fall under a certain threshold. This leads to teams with different numbers of players to start the draft. The way we deal with that is once you fill up your roster, you are done with your draft; I'd imagine the same rule applies with the OP's league.

 

[the next level]

We have rules to handle all these scenarios.

Regarding ties, we emphasize that high bidder wins. You can't cast a tying bid unless you have exactly the same amount of remaining money as a bid competitor. And in such a case, the bidding continues with REAL dollars. The winner of that bid will have therefore paid more to play in the upcoming season. We have never had to resort to this layer of tiebreaker, but also felt it necessary to define in case two or more team owners scream all "$200!" simultaneously when the bidding opens for Adrian Peterson. Again, this hasn't happened as most everyone in the room realizes they better save at least a little something for the free agent market.

The tiebreak scenario you asked about regarding the setup of the serpentine order is pretty simple. If two owners end the auction with equal money then the tiebreak for who gets the better serpentine spot is the inverse order of the number they drew out of the hat for nominating players.

It is allowable to win more than 2 players in the auction. In fact, you are widely considered to have done very well if you can pull this off because the only repercussion is you lose a pick in the FINAL round of the serpentine. And if you win 4 players in the auction, you lose your final two picks and so on (but noone has ever succeeded winning more than 3). Everyone in the room is aware of how good a deal it can be to win that third player for the equivalent of a 16th round pick, and there is a collective effort to prevent it from happening. A few people nonetheless pull it off each year. Yes, it is also possible to win one or none in the auction. You thus walk out of the room without a full roster, compelled to use free agency to pick up the remaining players. Remember what I said about the high energy/intensity of this event? We always have someone struggling to win a player for whom the pressure becomes more and more intense as you near the end of the 32-player limit.

The use of $200 as a starting point seems to work out fine. But it could just as easily be $1000 or $1 million or 333 euros. But what tends to happen in auctions is that bidding wars get down to single dollars so you can really cause your auction to drag out if you give everyone too many 'units' to work with. It's challenging to strategize how much money to leave for blind bidding. Because how much you need is relative to how much everyone else has and that's obviously a work in progress as the auction unfolds. Nonetheless, $50 is about the average remaining balance.

 

[stugnut]

Since you hold the first part of your draft in an auction format you are obviously in the camp of "auction is better", but you are willing to make the trade-off of substituting "better" for serpentine after round 2 as a way to decrease the amount of time the draft takes.

How much time do you figure you save by using this format? I'm curious because it sounds like decreasing the amount of time the draft takes was your motivation for not holding a full auction draft.

Have you considered finding someone to act as an auctioneer? This will speed up the draft immensely and you may find (we did) that an auction draft run by a good auctioneer will take a similar amount of time as a serpentine draft. Our 10 year old league has been auction now for 6 years and at first our auction drafts took about 2 hours longer. However, once we decided to use a friend as an auctioneer, our draft times are now about 45 minutes longer than a serpentine draft. You should see our auctioneer in action when it's near the end of the draft and players are going for $1 to $2. It takes about 10 seconds, *tops*, for these players to be auctioned off. We actually fly through the later rounds.

I would ask whether, if you believe auction drafts are "better", would a full auction draft with an auctioneer that takes 60 minutes longer than your hybrid draft be a fair trade-off of "better" for "time"?

Regarding loading rosters, if you use Draft Dominator to track the draft you may be able to easily load the players into your league management site. Check and see if you can either load a CSV file, or more likely, copy and paste players from the DD CSV file into your site.

 

[massraider]

Cool idea, I'd like to see the results of the auction, and maybe the first round of your draft.

 

[jestertj]

This sounds interesting...

 

[the next level]

Stugnut,

We do have an independent auctioneer and you're right about how much more efficient that makes the auction process. But my league is not interested in full-auction. They all feel our limited auction accomplishes its mission: equal access to the top-notch players, followed by a return to what they're most accustomed to. When an auction devolves to the point where everyone is going for $1-2, that's where I personally feel you may as well be running a serpentine. But the main reason for this is that we are all drinking pretty heavy by the middle-rounds and it's a whole lot easier to get up to pee during a serpentine than it is to walk out at any stage of an auction. . . .

Massraider,

A picture is worth a thousand words so I'll make a point this weekend to paste the way our 2009 draft played out.

 

[the next level]

Here's what happened last year:

$ Remaining 1st Rd Serpentine

TEAM1 R Moss ($94) $106 Portis (Toilet Bowl)

TEAM2 Warner ($50) T Jones ($50) $100 Slaton (Playoff team)

TEAM3 Lynch ($46) KSmith ($64) $90 Manning

TEAM4 Jones-Drew ($111) $89 P Thomas (League champ)

TEAM5 Turner ($120) $80 S Smith

TEAM6 Brees ($97) Steelers ($30) $73 R Wayne (playoff team)

TEAM7 Ca Johnson ($69) R Grant ($61) $70 Boldin

TEAM8 Fitzgerald ($90) Gates ($50) $60 Rodgers (League runner-up)

TEAM9 Forte ($102) Rivers ($49) $49 Ward

TEAM10 Ch Johnson ($92) Barber ($62) $46 Romo (playoff team)

TEAM11 R Brown ($65) Brady ($109) $26 Witten

TEAM12 Peterson ($145) Sproles ($31) $24 Bowe

TEAM13 Westbrook ($56) D Williams($100) Olsen ($22) $22 R White (Toilet Bowl)

TEAM14 Gore($77) Jacobs ($76) T Owens ($31) $16 Schaub (playoff team)

TEAM15 S Jackson ($105) A Johnson ($85) $10 Colston

TEAM16 Tomlinson ($109) Jennings ($62) C Taylor ($29) $0 McFadden

You can see that the end results were very mixed. Landing 3 players in the auction got one team into the playoffs yet another wound up in the toilet bowl. Conversely, the team that won the league only got one player in the auction. Admittedly, this whole thing would be easier to set up and execute if I walked into the draft with a set list of 32 blue-chip players to auction and eliminated the nomination process. But the team owners like the unpredictability and the feeling that they are controlling the draft to some extent. You can see how some of the nominated players are middle-tier (e.g. Olsen, Steelers, Sproles). That's the result of a few team owners having a late nomination but not much money remaining. When that happens, it practically guarantees another blue-chip leftover for the serpentine, and some owners adjust their strategies accordingly. Note that one owner spent every dollar, and thus could not play in the free agent market all year (a decision he regreted). All-in-all, this is great entertainment and very challenging.

 

[Tyrion]

Here's what happened last year: $ Remaining 1st Rd SerpentineTEAM1 R Moss ($94) $106 Portis (Toilet Bowl)TEAM2 Warner ($50) T Jones ($50) $100 Slaton (Playoff team)TEAM3 Lynch ($46) KSmith ($64) $90 Manning TEAM4 Jones-Drew ($111) $89 P Thomas (League champ)TEAM5 Turner ($120) $80 S SmithTEAM6 Brees ($97) Steelers ($30) $73 R Wayne (playoff team)TEAM7 Ca Johnson ($69) R Grant ($61) $70 BoldinTEAM8 Fitzgerald ($90) Gates ($50) $60 Rodgers (League runner-up)TEAM9 Forte ($102) Rivers ($49) $49 WardTEAM10 Ch Johnson ($92) Barber ($62) $46 Romo (playoff team)TEAM11 R Brown ($65) Brady ($109) $26 WittenTEAM12 Peterson ($145) Sproles ($31) $24 BoweTEAM13 Westbrook ($56) D Williams($100) Olsen ($22) $22 R White (Toilet Bowl)TEAM14 Gore($77) Jacobs ($76) T Owens ($31) $16 Schaub (playoff team)TEAM15 S Jackson ($105) A Johnson ($85) $10 ColstonTEAM16 Tomlinson ($109) Jennings ($62) C Taylor ($29) $0 McFadden You can see that the end results were very mixed. Landing 3 players in the auction got one team into the playoffs yet another wound up in the toilet bowl. Conversely, the team that won the league only got one player in the auction. Admittedly, this whole thing would be easier to set up and execute if I walked into the draft with a set list of 32 blue-chip players to auction and eliminated the nomination process. But the team owners like the unpredictability and the feeling that they are controlling the draft to some extent. You can see how some of the nominated players are middle-tier (e.g. Olsen, Steelers, Sproles). That's the result of a few team owners having a late nomination but not much money remaining. When that happens, it practically guarantees another blue-chip leftover for the serpentine, and some owners adjust their strategies accordingly. Note that one owner spent every dollar, and thus could not play in the free agent market all year (a decision he regreted). All-in-all, this is great entertainment and very challenging.

Thank you for sharing.Just curious. How much is the established minimun bid?

 

[ScottyFargo]

Is there any way you could PM me a list of your official rules? This is really interesting.

 

[UFFLCommish]

Is there any way you could PM me a list of your official rules? This is really interesting.

I'd like a copy of the rules as well. Thanks.

 

[the next level]

I am receiving numerous PM requests for a copy of the rules. I will be happy to oblige but I need a day or two to "clean them up" as they are currently laden with references specific to my league and individual participants. Give me a day or two.

Is anyone else out there using a blend? I'd love to hear what other schemes have been created.

 

[roadkill1292]

I am receiving numerous PM requests for a copy of the rules. I will be happy to oblige but I need a day or two to "clean them up" as they are currently laden with references specific to my league and individual participants. Give me a day or two. Is anyone else out there using a blend? I'd love to hear what other schemes have been created.

I run an auction for a league which buys eight players, then finishes out their rosters with an 8-round serpentine draft. It's not my cup of tea -- I'd rather do a full auction or at most save the last 2-4 rounds for drafting -- but they seem to like it.

 

[Johnny Rock]

I've posted in the past regarding Hybrid Drafts. I'll try to find the threads later. I'm in two leagues doing something similar. One has been around since the 80's.

 

[Jayrod]

I am receiving numerous PM requests for a copy of the rules. I will be happy to oblige but I need a day or two to "clean them up" as they are currently laden with references specific to my league and individual participants. Give me a day or two. Is anyone else out there using a blend? I'd love to hear what other schemes have been created.

My dynasty IDP league did a blend for our start up draft where we did a blind auction on draft positions by round.Every team had like $1000 to spend on the entire draft....none of this money would be used for anything else, so you were to allocate the entire amount over 30 rounds (at least $1/round) and submitted your bids to the commish.The commish then compared bids to determine the highest bidder for each round and then set the draft order by highest bidder first on down. Ties were broken by reverse of prior round (first round tie would have been decided by coin flip, but didn't happen). Was pretty cool and made for a nice little wrinkle where guys who really wanted a top 3 guy could drop a boatload on the first round if they wanted....which some guys did. My goal was to pick as high as possible in rounds 2-5, so I bid only like $6 dollars on the first round (where I picked like 10/12).Not as cool as your league, but didn't require in person participation.

 

[daveR]

I am receiving numerous PM requests for a copy of the rules. I will be happy to oblige but I need a day or two to "clean them up" as they are currently laden with references specific to my league and individual participants. Give me a day or two. Is anyone else out there using a blend? I'd love to hear what other schemes have been created.

My dynasty IDP league did a blend for our start up draft where we did a blind auction on draft positions by round.Every team had like $1000 to spend on the entire draft....none of this money would be used for anything else, so you were to allocate the entire amount over 30 rounds (at least $1/round) and submitted your bids to the commish.The commish then compared bids to determine the highest bidder for each round and then set the draft order by highest bidder first on down. Ties were broken by reverse of prior round (first round tie would have been decided by coin flip, but didn't happen). Was pretty cool and made for a nice little wrinkle where guys who really wanted a top 3 guy could drop a boatload on the first round if they wanted....which some guys did. My goal was to pick as high as possible in rounds 2-5, so I bid only like $6 dollars on the first round (where I picked like 10/12).Not as cool as your league, but didn't require in person participation.

Auctioning every draft pick might be fun, too. (ie. bid, win bid, take a player... bid, win bid, take a player... etc.)

 

[UFFLCommish]

I've posted in the past regarding Hybrid Drafts. I'll try to find the threads later. I'm in two leagues doing something similar. One has been around since the 80's.

http://forums.footballguys.com/forum/index...howtopic=177615Googled "hybrid fantasy football draft." Found your post bottom of first page.

 

[Mugsey]

I have been in a league for the past fifteen years that is keeper/auction/pick'em. I have a link to our rules if anyone is interested.

www.tribulski.com/detammdc/rules

Each team has $220, they may keep up to four players, but have to increase last years pay by 10%. The first ten round are an auction style, teams throw out a name & people bid. After that, it is an out of the hat, pick'em until everyone fills their roster.

There are some limits to keepers (only one at each skill pos. max two if one is a rookie & min. keeper pay is $25)

The two big tweaks that I would like to make is to increase the pay raise percentage to 15% & the ability to use auction $ in trading but overall it works pretty well.... oh yeah, we go to Vegas for the draft so that helps.

 

[the next level]

Our minimum bid is $20 for the first 16 players then drops to $10 for the second 16. But it's one of the rule-sets I'm angling to change. Minimum bids made our rules more complex than necessary because I had to address the various scenarios where teams don't have the minimum bid money when their turns to nominate come around. It would be better if I brought a list of players, such as Footballguys Top 50, to the draft and constrained nominations to that list. Then the min bid could drop to $1, as the whole purpose of the min bid is to discourage nominations of players too far down the value list.

Mugsey, that's a brilliant scheme and sounds like a lot of fun. Particularly the Vegas trip. Just goes to show what's possible with live draft fanatic leagues.

UFFLCommish, I did notice that this thread pops up when Googling 'hybrid drafts'. Which tells me two things: It's a scary, interconnected world we live in and that there's not enough information out there on this subject. So I got inspired and wrote an article on the topic over the long weekend and hope to convince David and Joe to publish it. Wish me luck.

 

[regularguy]

There are, however, two major drawbacks. First, live attendance is practically compulsory. There's no way I know of short of online teleconferencing to pull off this system. And that leads to the second drawback - it compels me to do a lot of manual entries after the draft. There's no "Blended" draft option that I know of on any of the fantasy websites. And therein lies the selfish motive for this post: I'd love to see this scheme grow into an option used widely enough that perhaps someday there can be an online option with automatic tracking.

I'm trying to convince my redraft league of 17 years to try an auction for the first time and think this hybrid might be a good compromise. Unfortunately, we usually have 2 or 3 owners drafting online with the rest of us live. So, I was wondering if a solution to this problem would be to do the auction portion manually with a teleconference and then enter these picks as keepers, set the draft order, and then proceed with the draft as normal. Thoughts? I see no reason this wouldn't work on MFL but am curious about ESPN as that's where we're at now and I've never used their keeper functionality.