Hi Ryan!

First of all, welcome to the Hoop-Ball forums.

I will be guesting in @DanBesbris' podcast "Fantasy NBA Today" sometime soon with the topic of "Auction Drafting 101" so watch out for that.

In the meantime, I can give you a few basic tips.

1. Before anything have an idea of your valuation/rankings of players, either by ranking them yourself or using a set of rankings like the Bruski 150, for example.

2. Look through the site where the Auction Draft will be held and check the pre-draft $ values of the players. That represents the monetary equivalent (in fantasy $) the site's rating of the players.

3. Compare it to the rankings you follow and see who are overvalued and who are undervalued.

4. In principle, stay away from overvalued players and try to get the most value for the least $ that you can. That's the auction equivalent of drafting the "Best Player Available" (BPA).

5. Be prepared. Know a maximum price you are willing to pay for your preferred players and plan out a "team budget". It's kind of like those memes where you "build a team" from players valued $5, $4, $3, $2, and $1. Except you're planning your team budget given their market value (in-site valuation).

6. In the event that there is a no-show manager at the auction, nominate "bad deals" or severely overpriced guys, like Jabari Parker. The system will pay up from that team's budget what Jabari Parker's tag price is on the site, leaving the team drafted by the AI, less money to compete with you for the players you do want.

7. Lastly, you can go about nominating in two ways:
7.1 Nominate the player you want and go for him and lock him in your team (if you win the bid).
7.2 Nominate players you don't want but figure other teams would want and thus making them spend their fantasy $, causing them to have less to bid against you when the players you want are actually up for bid.

I would also add a few different strategies that I'll discuss in greater detail in the draft guide, but the question of 'spend or save' is a massively critical one. It sort of goes hand in hand with 'stars and scrubs' but it doesn't necessarily have to be the same.

The big issue is that when you start with an auction budget of say $200, in a 10-team league to keep that math simple, you have $200 of $2,000. When folks start spending money, that ratio changes compared to the money you have and valuations start to shift significantly as the total dollar pool gets smaller. You might see early round players in a draft go for $30 and hear somebody say 'wow what a value' but loosely, that player would be valued the same as a pricey $60 player if there were only $1,000 left in the total dollar pool.

So needless to say auction is just amazing and I love it and there are so many ways to try and take a bite at the apple. Do you spend early while owners are still a little bit nervous? Do you have the capacity to sit for three hours and not buy anything because you did so? How much do you want to save and when do you want to save it for what will likely amount to be late-round players? Do you go 'stars and scrubs?' There are no right answers and even when you think you have the right answer the draft itself could behave a different way and render your strategy worthless. Being able to recognize market conditions is the best asset you could have.

I'm only posting so I can read the replies. I know I work here but I'm an auction draft dolt.

Thanks for the responses! I'll be keeping an eye out on any future content for sure

I guess the thing that I keep coming back to, is should I have targeted players in mind? or just assess the market value of every player that gets nominated and determine if I want to bid

I'd hate to have targeted players, for example Towns and Lowry and I don't bid on a bunch of good players as I'm waiting on my targets to be nominated, and then my targeted players go for way over my budget and suddenly I've missed out on anyone in the top 30 and my team will suck. But then again, I could always nominate them but from what I read it looks like a good strategy is to not nominate the players you want until the later picks?

Alot to consider and that's only one factor

You are right in saying so many factors feed into auction drafts, which is the reason why they are so intense and fun. It's very much a double-edged sword, where you need to be patient to see some good value picks, but not too patient as all your targets usually come off the board reasonably quickly. One thing I struggle to remember early on is that there are usually a lot of other players coming up later who I would love to own. But if there is a player I know I want and they are nominated, I'm not afraid to go after him.

It's all about confidence.

One way to boost your confidence going into a draft is spend some time researching cheap $1 players. Finding value here can free up money to pursue players you specifically want earlier in the draft. It might seem a bit like "Stars and Scrubs", but if you can make good $1 picks, then it becomes more "Stars and Sleepers" which is my ideal Auction Draft.

Note: The Bruski 150 has a lot of information on where you can find good value in those $1 players, so give it a look if you haven't yet

Hey, Ryan!

I have an auction draft for an 18-team, 9-cat, H2H league this Friday.

Here are some highlights from my game plan for that draft:

1. I will study price-range clusters and note who are the players I want and I know I don't want from each price bracket and jot them down.

2. I will earmark three, maybe four of the Top 8 players in fantasy who I will go in and fight for up to a certain price range. IF the market is bullish and aggressive on those guys too, I will let go. That is, until the last guy on the said list, whom I will OVERPAY for and make sure I own.

3. Why am I willing to overpay? Because I am confident that I will get to:
3.1 Balance out my budget by dipping into lower price brackets and get to build a team I want anyway.
3.2 Get good value picks from cheaper players, thus save $ from there.
3.3 As Aaron pointed out, the market will adjust to the amount of active $ left in play and prices will shift towards predictable ranges at some point.

4. One of the beautiful things about auction drafts is that you do not have to "settle" for players you do not particularly like.

Erik, would you want to be nominating those 3 - 4 top 8 players early, so you know who you have (or don't have) and what your remaining budget is earlier rather than later?

Ryan,

It depends if I am positioned as an early nominating team or not. If I am, I would "get it out of the way". If I am positioned late in Round 1, they will likely be nominated anyway, however, I will try to get a feel of what kind of guys I am drafting against. Get a feel of their strategy and adjust accordingly. Odds are though, I will get my "marquee guy" early, since I doubt I know I am NOT gunning for more than one of them.

Learned so much about auctions from simply just reading this thread. Great advice Erik, Tama, Aaron!

Additionally, I'd like to ask - How do you organize during the draft, and also.. how do you set your contingencies? In snake draft, I usually have a pretty good idea of who I'll be getting at each pick. I usually have 2-5 guys lined up behind before a pick so I'm rarely concerned on my alternative choices.

However, it seems like during an auction draft, it's very difficult to keep track of things on-the-fly. You might have a pre-set plan or did the math on how much you're spending here or there, and you also might have one player who you'll most definitely overpay for - but what do you do on the other times? Times when things aren't going as you planned, and you're mumbo-jumbo'd. It also seems very difficult to keep track of what other teams are doing, thus not knowing if they're punting, etc. How do you prepare for these things pre-draft?

pg cp3 $51
sg dwade $11
g hood $14
sf galinari $17
pf jokic $51
f alan williams $6
c brook lopez $27
util thad young $14
util taj gibson $2
bench winslow $1
bench danny green $2

hi guys! first time in auction draft as well. what do u think abt what i got? upsides? downsides? overprice? underprice?
thanks