DVBD and the Draft Dominator (1 Viewer)

[Evilgrin 72]

I like to look at past drafts in my league (particularly last years') - compare that to ADP, and then add in a sprinkling of my own observations to come up with who I think will be available at each of my picks in a given year. For instance, this year, my best guesses are

Pick #9 - available players will likely be QB4, RB5, WR2 (non-TE required league)

Pick #16 - QB5, RB11, WR2

Pick #33 - QB8, RB18, WR9

Pick #40 - QB8, RB23, WR11

Pick #57 - QB10, RB27, WR22

Pick #64 - QB12, RB28, WR26

And so on. This is culled from historical draft trends combined with ADP and players I see available at each spot and how they rank in our scoring format.

So, let's say you're fairly confident that things will break out this way or close to it. How would YOU best use this information with the dominator? I've been plugging in these numbers as the user-configurable VBD baselines by dropping in the numbers for pick #16 at the beginning of the draft and using those for my first two picks, then putting the round 4 baselines in and using those for the next two, and so on. Is that how you would do it? Would you change the baseline #s after every pick? Just use the round 6 numbers as the baseline since 6 picks will fill my starting lineup (1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR/TE)?

Any viewpoints/ideas are welcome...

 

[Evilgrin 72]

You can also use the custom dropoff feature to key in the number of players you expect to go before your next pick....

 

[Evilgrin 72]

Good talk, Russ.

 

[GregR]

Pick #9 - available players will likely be QB4, RB5, WR2 (non-TE required league)Pick #16 - QB5, RB11, WR2Pick #33 - QB8, RB18, WR9Pick #40 - QB8, RB23, WR11Pick #57 - QB10, RB27, WR22Pick #64 - QB12, RB28, WR26

At that point I'd probably write a quick program to brute force create all the possible team combinations and see which scores the most points.DVBD is basically a tool to try to help guide you towards the the true answer which is too hard to determine exactly with all the variables a draft has. But if you've narrowed it down this far, it's feasible to check every combination then and get to the final best answer that your projections and your beliefs about the players gives.Of course, there are other concerns that aren't included... handcuffs, bye weeks, etc. But it's still useful to know what the best answer is not including those yet.

 

[Sarnoff]

You can also use the custom dropoff feature to key in the number of players you expect to go before your next pick....

Use the ADP_USER file. It's made specifically for this. It'll compute the dropoffs for you.ADP_USER is a simple list, saved as a .csv. You can make it in Excel, or just type it in Notepad and save it as ADP_USER.CSV.It's just a list, like this:RBRBRBQBRBWRQBQB..etc, following your predictions for the entire draft. Include your team in the predictions. So you'll have 3 QBs, 4 RBs, and 1 WR gone in the first nine positions in the list, 4 QBs, 10 RBs, and 1 WR gone by spot 16, etc.Go to File>Setup and set all teams to draft from the Expert list. Then put a check next to "Draft Other Teams by ADP". Then go to File>Import ADP_USER. Draft Dominator will re-write the internal ADP to reflect your list. The #1 QB will have an ADP of 1.04 if your list looks like my example above. The #1 WR will be 1.06, the #3 QB will be 1.08, etc. DD will use this when calculating dropoffs between your picks. If you're at 1.09 and things have gone to plan (3 QB, 4 RB, and 1 WR off the board), the dropoffs before your next pick at 2.04 will be 1 QB and 6 RBs, which is exactly what you want.

 

[Johnny Rock]

You can also use the custom dropoff feature to key in the number of players you expect to go before your next pick....

Use the ADP_USER file. It's made specifically for this. It'll compute the dropoffs for you.ADP_USER is a simple list, saved as a .csv. You can make it in Excel, or just type it in Notepad and save it as ADP_USER.CSV.It's just a list, like this:RBRBRBQBRBWRQBQB..etc, following your predictions for the entire draft. Include your team in the predictions. So you'll have 3 QBs, 4 RBs, and 1 WR gone in the first nine positions in the list, 4 QBs, 10 RBs, and 1 WR gone by spot 16, etc.Go to File>Setup and set all teams to draft from the Expert list. Then put a check next to "Draft Other Teams by ADP". Then go to File>Import ADP_USER. Draft Dominator will re-write the internal ADP to reflect your list. The #1 QB will have an ADP of 1.04 if your list looks like my example above. The #1 WR will be 1.06, the #3 QB will be 1.08, etc. DD will use this when calculating dropoffs between your picks. If you're at 1.09 and things have gone to plan (3 QB, 4 RB, and 1 WR off the board), the dropoffs before your next pick at 2.04 will be 1 QB and 6 RBs, which is exactly what you want.

I think I tried this last year but I haven't loaded up the DD this year yet. My question during the live draft: Can you still retain in DD the "real world" ADP in addition to your league-tweaked ADP for decision making?

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

At that point I'd probably write a quick program to brute force create all the possible team combinations and see which scores the most points.

I was thinking this would be a pretty easy problem for Excel's 'Solver' tool. Set limits on each position and tell it to maximize VBD.

 

[The Jerk]

Only thing to be careful about, EG, is that the more you customize the DD to represent your league, if you use DD directly, then you may have a greater tendency to draft like your league. I like to do exactly what you described in your first post, weighted using three years of data: for this year, 50% for the 2011, 1/3 for 2010, 1/6 for 2009. I then put that into draft dominator x players deep (typically in the 80-96 pick range) in the user configurable vbd baseline. I save that DD list to give me an idea of league expectations. However, I prefer to use a modified version that fits more what I'm seeing for this year than what my league history dictates for generating my own draft list.

This dual approach gives me the best of both worlds: understanding of what the league should do, but in theory at least, drafting for best value that goes against league trends. The most important part of my draft preparation is knowing the tier of players I am likely to have in each round at each position. And of course, that is only true if everyone drafts like me. Assuming they don't, I'll have more players avabilable than I expect. And that's a good thing.

The main point is just that if you believe you are better than the average drafter in your league, then setting up DD's VBD baseline to match your league tendencies and drafting close to DD recommendations could actually hurt your draft, as you likely will be drafting more like every other owner.

 

[Evilgrin 72]

You can also use the custom dropoff feature to key in the number of players you expect to go before your next pick....

Use the ADP_USER file. It's made specifically for this. It'll compute the dropoffs for you.ADP_USER is a simple list, saved as a .csv. You can make it in Excel, or just type it in Notepad and save it as ADP_USER.CSV.It's just a list, like this:RBRBRBQBRBWRQBQB..etc, following your predictions for the entire draft. Include your team in the predictions. So you'll have 3 QBs, 4 RBs, and 1 WR gone in the first nine positions in the list, 4 QBs, 10 RBs, and 1 WR gone by spot 16, etc.Go to File>Setup and set all teams to draft from the Expert list. Then put a check next to "Draft Other Teams by ADP". Then go to File>Import ADP_USER. Draft Dominator will re-write the internal ADP to reflect your list. The #1 QB will have an ADP of 1.04 if your list looks like my example above. The #1 WR will be 1.06, the #3 QB will be 1.08, etc. DD will use this when calculating dropoffs between your picks. If you're at 1.09 and things have gone to plan (3 QB, 4 RB, and 1 WR off the board), the dropoffs before your next pick at 2.04 will be 1 QB and 6 RBs, which is exactly what you want.

Wow. Yeah, this is frigging perfect.

 

[GregR]

I'll also add... one of the absolutely most important parts of coming up with any draft strategy should be looking at the player list to identify players that you think will be drafted later than they should be.

You might have already done that... like if you say WR12 will be available at a draft spot, hopefully that might mean WRs 13-17 have already been drafted, but your WR12 is likely to be taken as the 18th WR because others are (in your opinion) wrong about his value.

But I don't know if you did that or not. If not, you really should be including that. It might be that you'd draft WR 15 before WR12 just because you think WR12 will still be available a round later.

And knowing what players will be undervalued will help paint a map for you to take through the draft to maximize your team.