Chaos Commish
Footballguy
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MFL Mock Auction (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Chaos Commish
- Start date
Fear The Turtle
Footballguy
I could give it a shot.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
Counting PMs from the other thread I have three willing participants, four including myself. Not a bad start.
KellysHeroes
Footballguy
count me in too... I never did one on MFL
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
I'm not sure how long this might take to fill and get started, but if we could start the bidding next Friday that would be fine with me.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
I figured we should use SSL scoring, 12 teams, 18 roster spots, with a $200 bank. I am open to whatever bank is preferred. $200 for a league this size feels sort of standard (or at least what I am used to). To answer your PM question:Here's how I believe auctions will work at MFL. Each owner nominates one player at a time, so we have 12 players up for bid constantly (as opposed to a live auction which would have one at a time). So obviously, when the player you've nominated is won, then you need to nominate again to keep the auction board full. I believe there will be a "prenominate" function similar to a predraft. At times there will be less than 12 with someone lagging, but it isn't big deal. The clock will reset with each new "highest" bid. Example. You've bid a max of 75 dollars for Ron Dayne. No one else has bid. It will appear as a $1 bid until someone else bids. I bid $5 and you still have the winning bid at $5 and I am informed that I have been outbid. The clock does not reset. I bid again, $50, the bid goes up to 50, but I am still outbid. The clock does not reset. I bid $80, Dayne is now mine (@$76) unless someone bids higher, and the timer resets. I'm guessing this is mostly a tweak of the free agency auction format at MFL. It looks like we will be able to fill this, so I will set up the mock site today and get back to you with what I find out in the process.eta: When I did these at Xperts a couple years ago, a 12 hour clock worked fine. That's 12 hours with no higher bid and the player is won. No overnight suspensions. They also had a feature touched on in the OP, wherein disinterested owners could "pass" and some players would then be won in under 12 hours. Example: No one is interested in Dayne @$77, and everyone "passes", then the 12 hour wait is bypassed, Dayne is on my roster, whoever nominated him nominates someone else. This "passing" will speed up the process.
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Chaos Commish
Footballguy
The first interesting option I come across is:
So nix the 12 hour clock for a 24 hour clock. Not a big deal if we get other expediting features. Option 3 would be fun if we had nothing else in the world to worry about. I'm going with option "2" and "1" days after. So if you submit a winning bid, the player is yours a day later. Also, this could get silly if we don't get the expediting features. If the $1 and $2 cheapies at the end of the auction all take 24 hours... well, we may just chalk this idea up to wishful thinking.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
Yeah, the auction options there are very limited. I'm still going to set this up to see how it goes, but it looks like a full 24 hour wait on every single player. Just guessing, but that will double the time this should take. Once we get to those last few roster spots, we should be able to crank up the pace, but we cannot. So, as commish maybe I can "force" picks and we can "pass" here in the forum, or in the MFL forum.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
It's set up HERE. Have a look. I don't know if this will be a solution to online auction issues, but it should be an interesting trial for MFL's auction format.
PM me for a password. I've tentatively set a start time of 4PM est this Thursday. That means the first player cannot be won until 4pm est Friday. That should work fine. If this fills fast, maybe we can get started sooner. I
PM me for a password. I've tentatively set a start time of 4PM est this Thursday. That means the first player cannot be won until 4pm est Friday. That should work fine. If this fills fast, maybe we can get started sooner. I
In the auction I did last year on MFL we started on July 7 and finished July 23. The last non $1 player was won on the 20th.Chaos Commish said:Yeah, the auction options there are very limited. I'm still going to set this up to see how it goes, but it looks like a full 24 hour wait on every single player. Just guessing, but that will double the time this should take. Once we get to those last few roster spots, we should be able to crank up the pace, but we cannot. So, as commish maybe I can "force" picks and we can "pass" here in the forum, or in the MFL forum.
Coin Flip
Footballguy
I am in an auction now where you each player nominates a player per day. That could allow more than 12 on the board at once but usually (with players being won daily also) keeps things rather balanced. For example I think we had no more than 24 at a given time. But some of them were just waiting for the timers to hit the 24 hr clock expiration. I agree we shouldnt have unlimited nominations, but one player per day works well. On day 10 however he went to 2 players per day to help the lower fee players get out there and be available for bid. These drafts lasted 14 days.
Just a note.....not saying you have to run this (its a mock) that way at all. Sometimes 12 players isnt enough to keep people as interested. No matter what the playing ground will be set so we can all live with whatever you come up with since we will all be playing by the same rules.
Just a note.....not saying you have to run this (its a mock) that way at all. Sometimes 12 players isnt enough to keep people as interested. No matter what the playing ground will be set so we can all live with whatever you come up with since we will all be playing by the same rules.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
I'm up for whatever works best and kind of curious to find out what that is. My issue with multiple players being nominated is that it hinders some of the strategy that makes auctions superior. The "if then" scenarios created by doing one player at a time gets muddled with a whole bunch of names up for bid. But if there is a way to do slow auctions for online leagues then great. I prefer doing a 12 simply because I'm interested in values based on a 12 teamer. My only high stakes league is a 12 team auction, so I used to do as many 12 team mock auctions as I could before early Sept when we go live. Also, we had a very hard time filling 16s back then. I don't see how 12 causes a loss of interest either, but I am curious why you think so? I'm open to each team nominating a player a day, or each team being allowed 2 nominees on the board at a time. I want to experiment with this and see what works best, so 'll defer to those of you who've done MFL auctions on whatever you think works best. Still need 4. Still starting Thursday afternoon.
Coin Flip
Footballguy
Honestly man I am cool either way we do it. There is no one way to make every league. Variety works nice too. We could work through this as needed, lets just be flexible if a change is preferred, maybe.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
We've stalled at 9. I'd like to do this, but I see 12 as a minimum.
Nathan R. Jessep
Footballguy
I'll give it a go...PM coming
Fullback Fro
yesno
IN
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
Excellent and thanks. This should be a good learning experience for those of us who haven't used MFL or auctioned much in general, and we have a handful of bidders who are familiar with the format who should be helpful if needed.Coin, tex, wannabe... none of you can step on my toes with ideas to make this work better so your experience with MFL auctions is more important than my commish status. Speak up at any time you think we can improve our approach.I want to start the auction with no specific rules beyond what MFL has set up. That means you can nominate as many as you want and winning bids sit for 24 hours. Adding rules is probably important, but any time a commish has to monitor something it can create issues. So let's just start with common sense. 30 players up for bid is probably silly. Two per team seems to work for some. I enjoyed xperts auctions that allowed one nominee per team at a time. I will probably start "my team" with the one at a time approach, but I don't want to enforce anything on anyone unless it appears to get out of whack. Make sense? Improvements made with "other rules" will be forwarded with detailed explanations to MFL. Let's have a good auction. 18 spots, $200 bucks in the bank to fill them, and wrapped up before July 4th.
Captain Hook
Footballguy
CC- let's keep bids in whole dollars please
Fullback Fro
yesno
If you nominate a player for bidding and then someone bids it up can you then rebid on th eplayer or are you out?
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
I believe I selected $1 increments. It would be funny if it was .1 or .01, but I think I got that right. Do you suggest this because I set it up wrong, or just in case?
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
You may bid until you're broke and are always free to raise a bid. You need a minimum bank of $1 per empty roster spot at all times though. So the max bid on your first player will be $183 leaving you $17 for the last 17 spots. Sometimes it expedites an auction to place your highest bid early. Like Ebay, it should not show how much you're willing to go, just the minimum necessary to win. So, I may bid 80 dollars for Dayne and win him for $1 if no one else bids. If someone bids $81, then I just may go to $82 or higher.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
And be patient with me if I screwed something up in the settings. They seemed very basic, but you never know, and not only have I never commished an auction at MFL, I have also never participated in one there except for FA in Zealots. I do have 10 years of auctioning under my belt and god knows how many mock auctions I did at xperts, so I should be able to get it right eventually.
Captain Hook
Footballguy
CC - I presume there will be an email to everyone when this gets underway?
Checked earlier and it wasn't enabled.
I asked about the dollar increments because their example had bids of $1.25 etc
Checked earlier and it wasn't enabled.
I asked about the dollar increments because their example had bids of $1.25 etc
Nathan R. Jessep
Footballguy
The timer has counted down (and now started counting back up the other way), but it still says Auctions are not allowed. Guess it has to be turned on manually?
Forgive me if I am screwing something up, I've used MFL for several years, but I have never done an auction on an MFL site before, so I am learning as I go here.
ETA: Nevermind, it's up and running now...guess it just took a minute or so once the timer countdown reached 00:00
Forgive me if I am screwing something up, I've used MFL for several years, but I have never done an auction on an MFL site before, so I am learning as I go here.
ETA: Nevermind, it's up and running now...guess it just took a minute or so once the timer countdown reached 00:00
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Chaos Commish
Footballguy
I didn't enter emails with the franshise set up because I didn't ask for them. I'll PM everyone who hasn't been to the stie since the bidding began. I know Duckboy won't be online until later tonight or tomorrow.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
Also, my FA auctions at MFL always showed the team with the current winning bids name. Not for this one? That's different. Or I have something set wrong.
Hook, anyone? Is this normal?
Hook, anyone? Is this normal?
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Fullback Fro
yesno
It shows the winning bidder on the enter bids page.Chaos Commish said:
Fullback Fro
yesno
Is there way we can set thsi as a best ball league and see how it plays out at the end of the season?
tex
Footballguy
Great idea Fro, but we would need someway to tally the scores unless we want to pay for the site. I'd like to add that the one auction league I am in uses MFL every year for the auction, and we are a teamer. We are allowed to put up players at a time and must nominate another player every time one of our players goes off the board or when we win a player. It works real well for us.
tex
Footballguy
I'd be all for it.
Fullback Fro
yesno
I don;t think Yahoo can accomodate best ball scoring or 2pts per Rec for TEs' - can it?
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
AOL's freebie could have done the job last year, but they are going through changes. When the new set up ready, I'll check it out.
Captain Hook
Footballguy
meh - I have enough holes in the head, but make yourselves happy.Glad to see this capability at MFL, but I have the same problem with it as I did at xpert - not a true auction, so not enough value for me personally.I could see that with some work/rules/tinkering that a group could use it - just not my cup of whiskey
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
I'm enjoying this auction and I enjoyed xperts too, but I agree it's not a true auction and it probably isn't going to work for converting the league I would like to convert. However, let's talk about tinkering with it. How would you improve it? Some thoughts. Either get MFL to add a "pass" feature or create one with a message board thread on each player and the commish forces ownership after 11 pass. I'm also tinkering with the notion of opening and closing nominations. Iow, we nominate an agreed upon number of players in an agreed upon "draft" order, and the commish locks nominations until... i dunno, half of them are gone. Say we start with 12. When six are gone, six more get nominated and nominations are again closed. This would focus things a little better. Get MFL to change the timer options so it could be cranked up to as little as one hour. I'm not sure if I use a fraction in the current setup that this won't work. It asks "___ days"; what if I put in 1/2? Would the clock set to 12 hours? I may try if no one knows the answer.Ideally, one player is auctioned at a time. At some point adding more defeats some of the purposes of an auction. Where is that point? Auctioning one player at a time in a slow draft would take far too long to be reasonable. Asking everyone to show up live at Fantasy Auctioneer and have a live auction online has, in my and many others experience, been a major pain that puts the credibility of the league/draft in doubt. So I'm thinking 6 names at a time might be a very reasonable compromise; AND MFL has a feature that forces ownership in 24 hours. We as owners would have to be on our toes more, but we would have 12 names rostered by now instead of 2, and we would have done so without 19-20 names on the board. I am thinking this idea deserves a shot with a group that understands the players are on 24 hour timers regardless of bid. I guess each player would wind down like an ebay auction with furious activity in the closing minutes.. well, sometimes. I'm kind of curious to explore the pros and cons of this approach. All input appreciated.Captain Hook said:
Captain Hook
Footballguy
I agree CC - let's try some things now while we have drafters and the time - we won't later
Definitely agree on max of 12 players up for auction at a time (should be one nominated by each franchise - when your player is "sold" - you should nominate again)
Also definitely agree that we should switch right away to a 24 hour clock - gives everyone ample time and doesn't let it drag on like it does now.
On nominations might also work to say that you can't nominate a 2nd or 3rd QB (RB/WR/TE) if there is NO nomination at one of those four positions - so if only WR up for bid goes off, nominee would have to be a WR
Definitely agree on max of 12 players up for auction at a time (should be one nominated by each franchise - when your player is "sold" - you should nominate again)
Also definitely agree that we should switch right away to a 24 hour clock - gives everyone ample time and doesn't let it drag on like it does now.
On nominations might also work to say that you can't nominate a 2nd or 3rd QB (RB/WR/TE) if there is NO nomination at one of those four positions - so if only WR up for bid goes off, nominee would have to be a WR
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
Excellent. This is the type of stuff I'm looking for. As far as switching to a fixed 24 hour clock, as opposed to the current one which resets to a new 24 with each higher bidder, I'm all for it, but we have 10 other people to consider before doing it... right away. Let me try to contact everyone here and there and let them know this is coming. We may have to wait out the weekend. I have no idea what the change will do to the existing auction.
Hopefully nothing. It's just a mock afterall.I would love to find a comfortable way to keep the total nominees around 5 or 6 myself, at least for the first 100 players or so. We'd have to turn them over twice a day to have 100 off the board in ten days... somehow. I think that would closely simulate the real thing, and it would help me personally with my approach to auction drafts. I target players with plans a, b and c. Usually one or none of my targets is on the board. This slows me down. Sometimes 4 or 5 hit the board and this messes up which plan to go with. Anyway, that's just more talk.
Here's what I'm going to try to push through... basically, Hook's idea. No more nominating until we're down to 11. Whoever wins the player who reduces us to 11 may nominate a 12th. No one else may nominate until they win a player. As of Monday, the clock will no longer reset for the highest bidder. It will be a 24 hour countdown on all 12 players.
I like the idea to always have players at each key position on the board. Overloading one position can screw up a strategy. I won't ask for this feature yet, but will notify all to keep it under consideration. At some point we'll want to pick up the pace. Probably a couple times. I'm guessing when half the league (six teams) have half their roster (9 players) we may want to bring a few more off the board than 12 a day. At 12 a day we finish the auction in 18 days. That's actually acceptable to me. I was shooting for having us done before the 4th of July messed with our schedules. It's 13 days to the third and we'll have about a dozen off the board today. Sounds like a challenge. If we go longer, just a heads up, I will be on the ocean the 11th through 13th. I may have some access, but I'm not sure.
I don't think I like the hard fast 24 rule rule. That would definately provide an advantage to the guys able to log in right at the end of that 24 hour period.
Also, I'm not sure that there would be anything (strategically) lost/gained by having 18-20 players going at all tmes instead of 10-12.
Also, I'm not sure that there would be anything (strategically) lost/gained by having 18-20 players going at all tmes instead of 10-12.
O...and we'd never finish by the fourth even under the proposed change, because there is no way that guys would be able to nominate there next player immediatey upon winning a player...you'd be lucky if you could get that next nomination at an average 5 hour clip. That would add at least a week to your estimate.
Captain Hook
Footballguy
CC - MFL auction is now screwed up - showing players (Bowe, D. Anderson) who have ALREADY been awarded as having time left in the auction.
why the f%#$@& do guys keep bidding a guy up only a couple hours before he's to be won?
We've got several players still on the board who were among the first nominated. Repeatedly, guys are waiting until there's only an hour or two left, and THEN outbidding the previous high bid, thus restarting the clock.
That's ridiculous. EXAMPLE: Carson Palmer was only an hour or two from being locked on a roster when someone FINALLY took the high bid from me....when I was the initial bidder. I'm not pissed to get outbid...but I am frustrated that someone would wait that long to do so, because there is NO tactical advantage to doing that. There are at least three players who were nominated on Thursday still on the board. ONLY 12 PLAYERS ARE COMPLETED!
The only thing I can think of is that guys might only be signing in once a day, which makes this untenable.
We've got several players still on the board who were among the first nominated. Repeatedly, guys are waiting until there's only an hour or two left, and THEN outbidding the previous high bid, thus restarting the clock.
That's ridiculous. EXAMPLE: Carson Palmer was only an hour or two from being locked on a roster when someone FINALLY took the high bid from me....when I was the initial bidder. I'm not pissed to get outbid...but I am frustrated that someone would wait that long to do so, because there is NO tactical advantage to doing that. There are at least three players who were nominated on Thursday still on the board. ONLY 12 PLAYERS ARE COMPLETED!
The only thing I can think of is that guys might only be signing in once a day, which makes this untenable.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
Remember this?
Yeah, you probably need to relax. This isn't a race. Auctions finish when they finish, even live ones. I waited on Palmer deliberately. There was nothing ridiculous about it. It happens in slow auctions. It happens in slow free agency auctions at MFL. I have my reasons. They are good reasons. If you can't figure it out, just relax. One good reason to bid late like that is to frustrate an antsy owner, btw. Not that that was my intention here, but the example you provide is certainly worth remembering. In my case, I was not prepared to take a QB yet, nor was Palmer a specific target. But, I also wasn't prepared to let someone have Palmer for $13. Sometimes you bid defensively. He seemed way to low considering the other QB pricing. So for more than $13 but less than something yet to be known, I'll take him. I would have preferred see a little more QB pricing but didn't have the chance. So, I gave the other ten people as much time as I could to see if one of them would raise the bid. No one did, so I did. No big deal. Not ridiculous. You see value, you take it, sometimes you wait in a slow auction. Slow auctions include a bunch of these scenarios that I believe Hook and I would like to remedy somehow, but as long as we run with these rules and no one is breaking them, then everyone deals with them. Hopefully without getting too frustrated. Slow auctions generally start very slowly, like this one. And they generally speed up incrementally until the end when things happen very fast as we fill out our rosters. Sorry you're frustrated. Not sorry you didn't get Palmer for $13 and his bid was raised with just a few hours left.
Chaos Commish
Footballguy
I disagree with this too. Everyone would know exactly when the clock was set with each player and would usually be waiting. Arrangements for pre-nominating would be quite simple with that approach too. We'd have 24 players off the board sometime tomorrow with that idea. I am certain of it. We'd be over 40 easily tomorrow doing 12 at a time instead of 6. The other objections were solid though. Some people cannot check in enough to have a fair chance in that format. I'd still like to try it sometime with an active crew. I'm sure Hook was disappointed it got beat down without a chance, but then we have someone who hasn't signed in all weekend in this mock so...
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tex
Footballguy
CC you are pretty much on the money here. Yes it is frustrating to see someone jacked up right before he is to be on your roster but it has happened to me, and I have done it to others too. The main reason I have waited until last minute in the past is exactly the reason CC stated here. Too much value to allow another owner to have that player. Even if I'm not targeting a specific player, if I see there is too much value to let slide, then I will definitely throw a bid out there. It happens and you have to learn to deal with it if you're going to play in a slow auction.
OK...first of all, I was never really targeting Palmer. I had nominated him HOPING somebody would overpay for him, as I believe him to be over-rated....so I have ZERO hard feelings about him being sniped.I had bid (initially) as high as I was personally willing to pay for him (15 I think), and had never planed to out-biod anyone else. I was somewhat surprised when nobody bid on him sooner.tex said:CC you are pretty much on the money here. Yes it is frustrating to see someone jacked up right before he is to be on your roster but it has happened to me, and I have done it to others too. The main reason I have waited until last minute in the past is exactly the reason CC stated here. Too much value to allow another owner to have that player. Even if I'm not targeting a specific player, if I see there is too much value to let slide, then I will definitely throw a bid out there. It happens and you have to learn to deal with it if you're going to play in a slow auction.Chaos Commish said:
I appreciate your explanation of the reasoning behind waiting, and yes...I'm an auction rookie, but not a dumb one. I have made dozens of bids so far for no reason other then a belief that the current bid was too low...hoping NOT to win the bid. The one thing I've learned in that is that I DON'T have to wait until the last minute to do so. Isn't that why we have proxy bidding set up in the first place....to allow you to set your max, and then forget about it? If you thought the bid too low, you could have bid it up much sooner.
I guess what I am saying is that with PROXY BIDDING, it really isn't necessary to wait until the last minute.
tex
Footballguy
Rene I'll add a little to my previous post. Some people, myself included, don't wait intentionally until the last minute to up a bid on someone. Many times what I am hoping when I see a player going too cheap is that someone else will up the bid, so I wait and wait. Finally it comes down to the last hour or 2 and lo and behold, nobody has upped the bid. At that time if I feel the player is going far too cheaply, then I feel compelled to bid. However I do have some scruples. If it is less that an hour left on the bid, I don't care how undervalued the guy is, I won't make any more bids on him-----unless the owner who has the high bid has pissed me off in the past. 
