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For those that have switched to AUCTION LEAGUES (1 Viewer)

koreansteve

Footballguy
My league is thinking about switching to an auction league instead of a redraft. I know how an auction draft works from searching this forum, but I was wondering if you guys liked it more after switching, or if you prefer redraft after having tried an auction draft.

My perspective:

It takes the luck of draft order out and requires better knowledge of all players ... suitable for a more competitive league. Players can incorporate more strategies than being locked into RB runs in rounds 1 and 2, WR runs in rounds 3 and 4, QBs going in round 5, etc.

I think i'd be inclined to like it, but ...

HOW HAVE YOU LIKED THE TRANSITION TO AN AUCTION DRAFT?

 
I did my first auction draft this year and loved it. The most fun I've ever had playing. Knowing that I can have any player I want if I am willing to pay is a great feeling.

 
I did my first auction draft this year and loved it. The most fun I've ever had playing. Knowing that I can have any player I want if I am willing to pay is a great feeling.
We switched to an auction years and years ago and have never wanted to go back. I had to fill in for a buddy who couldn't make his draft in another league and I could not believe how boring a draft was by comparison. It was also incredibly confining. As your pick comes around and the two guys you really want get taken, you're stuck with a list of players you don't really want but it's too early to take some value or sleeper players. Ugh. I couldn't help but think if this was an auction I could have had those two guys for an extra buck or two. I hated it. It made me appreciate all the more the total freedom that comes with an auction.Auctions rule!
 
Auction by a long shot.

Why have a draft dictate who your players are.

Strategy of your drafting plans, you have to think on your feet and be willing to change as the value of players and positions will differ for each auction. My favorite part is watching owners in your league paying way too much chasing last years points.

Access to all players as long as your willing to pay.

 
Auctions by a landslide.

Being able to construct your own team how you see fit is a lot better imo than the limitations of a draft. I would not have been able to assemble this team in a redraft

Cutler/Delhomme

MB3/Portis/Ronnie Brown/DeAng/Choice

Fitz/Jennings/Evans/Mason/S Rice

Shiancoe - bought Crumpler in the auction :wolf:

 
koreansteve said:
My league is thinking about switching to an auction league instead of a redraft. I know how an auction draft works from searching this forum, but I was wondering if you guys liked it more after switching, or if you prefer redraft after having tried an auction draft.

My perspective:

It takes the luck of draft order out and requires better knowledge of all players ... suitable for a more competitive league. Players can incorporate more strategies than being locked into RB runs in rounds 1 and 2, WR runs in rounds 3 and 4, QBs going in round 5, etc.

I think i'd be inclined to like it, but ...

HOW HAVE YOU LIKED THE TRANSITION TO AN AUCTION DRAFT?
Just did my first auction this year and loved it. I made a couple of rookie mistakes but still it's great not being dealt your hand by being given a draft pick and then seeing guys slide off that you never had a chance to get. Also liked the additional strategies created by an auction draft, such as trying to get people to bid on guys a bit too early, etc..
 
We went to auction two years ago. I will never again return to a draft league.

With a draft the outcome is fairly predictable. Auction? Spend however much you can and get whoever you like.

Auction is the way to go. Try it and you'll see what we're all talking about.

 
I did my first auction draft this year and loved it. The most fun I've ever had playing. Knowing that I can have any player I want if I am willing to pay is a great feeling.
We switched to an auction years and years ago and have never wanted to go back. I had to fill in for a buddy who couldn't make his draft in another league and I could not believe how boring a draft was by comparison. It was also incredibly confining. As your pick comes around and the two guys you really want get taken, you're stuck with a list of players you don't really want but it's too early to take some value or sleeper players. Ugh. I couldn't help but think if this was an auction I could have had those two guys for an extra buck or two. I hated it. It made me appreciate all the more the total freedom that comes with an auction.Auctions rule!
Agree, love the auction. But do do a few drafts, variety is the spice of life.
 
Need to appologize to the OP for a mild hijack although he might find it usefull. How do you guys handle dynasty/keeper league auctions. I am mostly curious about not having draft picks anymore. How are the draft picks converted to "dollars" and on what scale. I've been thinking about pitching it to our league and was curious about some of the details. Feel free to PM me if you don't feel the questions pertains to the OP's question.

 
Auctions are like poker. Play your opponent instead of playing the "cards" and not only do you get better picks, but you dominate their mind and crush their spirit.

But if that doesn't sound like fun to you . . .

 
Our hometown league switched to Auction about seven or eight years ago and we'd never go back to redraft.

The draft takes us about 9-10 hours but it is the best day of the year.

 
Our hometown league switched to Auction about seven or eight years ago and we'd never go back to redraft.The draft takes us about 9-10 hours but it is the best day of the year.
is this typical of an auction draft for 12 teams? My leaguemates would be dead of alcohol poisoning if we drafted for this long. 4 hours is tops for my ADD league..
 
Our hometown league switched to Auction about seven or eight years ago and we'd never go back to redraft.The draft takes us about 9-10 hours but it is the best day of the year.
is this typical of an auction draft for 12 teams? My leaguemates would be dead of alcohol poisoning if we drafted for this long. 4 hours is tops for my ADD league..
It all depends on roster size, how much screwing around you do, etc.We draft 16 players via the auction, and then do a five round snake reserve draft.We have tons of beer and food and we usually break a few times to go outside and throw the football around, etc. If we really hurried, we could probably be done in around 4-5 hours. Everyone starts getting pretty boned up by around 4 or 5 in the afternoon and then it's easy to shift focus from the draft to a story your drunken buddy is telling.Ours is a little non-traditional in that we "go around the table" instead of an "open auction". We use "pass blocks" that you put up if you want to get out on a guy. Once you are out, you are done.We also get a draft board and the jumbo stickers color-coded for all the positions, etc.All of our wives and stuff just know that we will be out of pocket that whole day, barring a death in the family or something.
 
An auction definitely takes longer. There are times when it's painful (Two dollars for ADP . . . Three dollars . . . [Pause] . . . Going once, going twice . . . Five dollars!) and people will complain, but in the end (as everyone so far has noted) it ends up being worth it.

 
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Both of the auctions I had this year were between 3 and 3.5 hours. If you have people dinking around with 1 dollar, 2 dollar with a 30 dollar player it would take a while. People in my leagues are quick to get each player into their price range pretty quickly.

 
I don't know of anyone that has switched to an auction draft that didn't like it better than the traditional draft.

 
I play in both auction and draft leagues.

I enjoy auctions much more. BTW, both of my 14 team auction drafts (17 players) were completed within 4.5 to 5 hours, so they don't drag on forever if you keep them moving. We make the team that won the year before "run the board" (which really forces one to be on their toes). There is a ton of strategy/pokerlike involved in the draft. I find straight drafts very formulaeic (i.e, I've got the 12th pick in a 12 teamer so I'll get Grant and Turner at the turn, etc).

Btw, auction draft are much better done as live in person drafts.

 
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We switched to an auction four years ago and everyone loves it. It is a challenge if all players are not present and are via phone, but can be worked out.

We bid in order and keep the same order throughout the auction. Once you pass on a bid, you can not jump back in. This keeps the pace going. A lot more startegy.

Gives all players a chance to own the best player...at a price.

 
So how does an auction typically work? Does someone nominate a player and then everyone starts bidding? We put in $100 each so how would we incorporate our entry fee into the draft? We have 21 man rosters with 1 franchise player, it's a 10 team league. TIA.

 
An auction definitely takes longer. There are times when it's painful (Two dollars for ADP . . . Three dollars . . . [Pause] . . . Going once, going twice . . . Five dollars!) and people will complain, but in the end (as everyone so far has noted) it ends up being worth it.
I do a 13 team, 16 player auction league done in 3hrs. 100 cap, 0 min nomination, I am the auctioneer and keep it moving and have about 6 owners who get guys up to their price quick. probably add 30-60 min for a $200 cap. Love the 0 min nomination, speeds it up, as every owner can figure out what his max bid is easily.
 
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gcoast3 said:
We switched to an auction four years ago and everyone loves it. It is a challenge if all players are not present and are via phone, but can be worked out.We bid in order and keep the same order throughout the auction. Once you pass on a bid, you can not jump back in. This keeps the pace going. A lot more startegy.Gives all players a chance to own the best player...at a price.
Did this method for 2 years, didn't work for us. Takes out some of the strategy and allows for owners to still work the clock and use all their time allotment to decide what to do. With a straight auction, bid or lose the guy, no thinking, going once, going twice, gone.
 
So how does an auction typically work? Does someone nominate a player and then everyone starts bidding? We put in $100 each so how would we incorporate our entry fee into the draft? We have 21 man rosters with 1 franchise player, it's a 10 team league. TIA.
How we do it is we have one owner bring up a player for auction and he does the bidding. Ex. he brings up Portis for $10 and it goes from there and he will conclude that bid when it dies down with the highest bidder. We then put up on the draft board how much that owner has left moneywise to auction with under the chosen players name. Next owner then brings up another player to bid on of his choosing. Remember to have at least one dollar per draft spots left on the board for each owner.We start with $200 of fictious auction dollars. We have a 10 man league and it goes smoothly in about 2.5 hours and we take a break in the middle for about 15 minutes or so. I really don't think it takes much longer than a serpentine draft after you get the kinks out. We are going on our 5th year doing the auction format and would never go back. Serpentine drafts seem like a bore comparatively now. Good LuckP.S. Our league was resistent to the change when the auction style was first proposed and now we all see there is no other way we would want to have it.
 
FWIW, I don't like any restrictions in an auction as some have indicated that once an owner drops out of the bidding they can't jump back in. All my auctions allow any team to jump back in as long as the auctioneer has not said "gone" (going once, going twice, gone). The objective is too extract as much money out of everyone else, you limit that aspect by not allowing teams to jump back in. Also, you may really want a stud, you get in early, a few other guys go back and forth and then you come in with a final bid at the end (hopefully final unless you go back and forth with the last bidder).

I think that at most it adds ~ 1 hour to a draft if you do it efficiently. Either way an in person draft is a "night out" so it doesn't really make a difference to me timewise.

 
If you want the ultimate tool to run your auction, here it is. It's pricey but I ran four different auctions with it this past year, which brought the one-time cost per head down to less than $10. Buying 100 players will take about 2 hours and things go even faster on the back end as salary caps dwindle. It also handles up to four remote participants, which I've used for two years without a hitch. We had two owners participate from their home computers and they were at absolutely no disadvantage by doing so.

Yeah, I'm serious about my auctions. :thumbup:

 
Thanks for the info. I know my league is resistant to big changes so the more info I can feed them leading up to next season the better chance I have of getting them on board. :P

 
Definitely auction in a landslide. We started an auction dynasty this year. 10 team, 40 player rosters. Wouldn't change it and would not go back to draft order.

 
Need to appologize to the OP for a mild hijack although he might find it usefull. How do you guys handle dynasty/keeper league auctions. I am mostly curious about not having draft picks anymore. How are the draft picks converted to "dollars" and on what scale. I've been thinking about pitching it to our league and was curious about some of the details. Feel free to PM me if you don't feel the questions pertains to the OP's question.
In response to the OP, we've been doing auction for several years after about 10 as a draft league and we love it.To this one, we have an auction keeper league. Total cap is $200. You can keep up to three players for $5 more than you paid for them. Max keeper is 3 years to keep the salary structure from getting too distorted. As an example, I drafted Greg Jennings for $4 as a rookie. He was $9 this year and I get to keep him for $14 next year. After that, it's back into the player pool. The system works really well for us and creates an interesting dynamic near the end of the auction if more than one person has the same young sleeper identified with an eye on future years. Those guys will sometimes end up going for more than the players 10-12 spots ahead of them on a cheatsheet.
 
An auction definitely takes longer. There are times when it's painful (Two dollars for ADP . . . Three dollars . . . [Pause] . . . Going once, going twice . . . Five dollars!) and people will complain, but in the end (as everyone so far has noted) it ends up being worth it.
I do a 13 team, 16 player auction league done in 3hrs. 100 cap, 0 min nomination, I am the auctioneer and keep it moving and have about 6 owners who get guys up to their price quick. probably add 30-60 min for a $200 cap. Love the 0 min nomination, speeds it up, as every owner can figure out what his max bid is easily.
We have a $1 min bid and the Excel spreadsheet I use has a list of roster spots remaining and max bids that stays updated. I agree that it can be done in a decent amount of time if you have people that aren't being idiots and bidding on Adrian Peterson in $1 increments from the start. 12 teams, 18 players here and we get it done in under four hours.
 
Btw, auction draft are much better done as live in person drafts.
Definitely.
This is one thing holding back my money league from switching. 4 guys out of state would not be fun trying to auction over the phone. Draft takes 4 hours as it is, and most of us have young kids and can't waste a whole weekend just for a hobby. I'd rather go on vacation!
That's why we hold our draft in Vegas ever year :thumbup:
 
Need to appologize to the OP for a mild hijack although he might find it usefull. How do you guys handle dynasty/keeper league auctions. I am mostly curious about not having draft picks anymore. How are the draft picks converted to "dollars" and on what scale. I've been thinking about pitching it to our league and was curious about some of the details. Feel free to PM me if you don't feel the questions pertains to the OP's question.
I'm in an auction salary cap/contract dynasty. In short, it's replicated as much as possible after the NFL - rookie draft, free agent auction, franchise tags, contract extensions, practice squad, etc.The full rules are several pages long and need to be updated after this season, if you want them pm me sometime in January after they're updated.
 
Auctions are like poker. Play your opponent instead of playing the "cards" and not only do you get better picks, but you dominate their mind and crush their spirit. But if that doesn't sound like fun to you . . .
Sounds perfect for my family league.Going to it next year.I did a test public ESPN auction draft.Only concern is when everyone is down to being able to bid $1,it turns into a 30 sec regular draft.Workable, except many valuable players are mixed in with the rest of the NFL players with a $1 value.Near impossible to find if valuable players are available at that point.So I will try next year and rank any possible player I want at least $2 and stress it to the league and see how that goes.I think it will really be fun to steal and bid up players in a family LAN setting at ESPN.Public auction redraft team drafted starters E. Manning, LT, Westy, DWill, R. Moss, Harrison, ODan, Vikes, Kaeding
 
Not that you needed anymore convincing, but we switched last season. Everyone loves it - a little more homework, but you can get the players you want if you are willing to pay the price. I believe a lot more strategy involved.

BIG THUMBS UP FOR AUCTION!

 
I switched to dynasty auction and will never go back to a snake draft. There is so much more strategy to an auction draft, not only how much for each player, but just who to nominate and when, is strategic. I might do some more redraft auctions next year. Otherwise I'll have to stick to fantasyauctioneer mock drafts :thumbup:

 
Well, you guys have convinced me (the OP). I'm definitely ready for an auction league or 2 next year. PM me if anyone has an opening next year.

thanks for all the replies.

 
Simple question, what do you do when 1 owner runs out of cash halfway thru the auction?

Also, those that have liked the switch, do you like NOT being able to trade draft picks?

Trading has always been the most fun for me in all my drafts, not being able to seems to take some of the fun away for me.

 
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Simple question, what do you do when 1 owner runs out of cash halfway thru the auction?Also, those that have liked the switch, do you like NOT being able to trade draft picks?Trading has always been the most fun for me in all my drafts, not being able to seems to take some of the fun away for me.
We have a max bid so that everyone has to have at least $1 left for every spot on their roster so they can't run out of cash.
 
IMO auctioning online or via software blows. I don't care how good some program/site is or should I say is supposed to be. If you can't get everyone together at the same time in the same room, you might as well do the old-fashioned, out-dated, unfair and stupid style snake draft.

 
AUCTION 1000% Our league has never turned back since 5 years ago. Its seriously the greatest day of the year. I consider it Christmas

 
Can anyone give any avice on how to keep an auction time down to a reasonable amount or speed it up so it's not a deal-killer? Our draft is about three hours. It's hard enough just to get everyone's schedules to work for that block of time. No way they can commit to eight or nine hours.

 
Can anyone give any avice on how to keep an auction time down to a reasonable amount or speed it up so it's not a deal-killer? Our draft is about three hours. It's hard enough just to get everyone's schedules to work for that block of time. No way they can commit to eight or nine hours.
Other than the guy above that takes time out to throw around the football, I've never heard of an auction taking that long. We added about an hour, maybe slightly less, to our draft time.
 

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