Universal Rules for Auction Drafts

Hey folks, over the years and especially this summer I’ve received a number of requests to provide content on auction drafts. For full transparency, I tend to do only 1-2 auctions per year and I’ve long had a rule against providing in-depth strategy articles or rankings for formats that I am not highly invested in myself.

While I would never claim to be a leading expert on this format, I do think auctions are a natural fit for some of the universal, market-based content I’ve written over the years. I also think they are extremely fun both to participate in and discuss! So for anyone who is curious — here is a first-hand account of how I prepare for auction drafts whenever I have the opportunity to participate in one.

A massive complication of auction leagues is that it’s much harder to give two-dimensional rankings or auction values than it is for snake drafts. Auction values are inherently tied to the budget and the optimal approach is highly dynamic based on the activity of your league-mates and the specific scoring settings of your leagues. In my personal experience, auction leagues are comprised of players who already want a little something extra out of their fantasy experience, which means these leagues are often experimental with scoring and roster settings.

The lack of universally applicable instructive content makes auction drafts more exploitative than standard leagues. It’s quite likely that each auction you walk into will be filled with a mix of managers who are either detrimentally risk-averse or erroneously confident.

Here is a surefire way to have an aggressively average auction draft: walk into the draft without a concrete plan or estimated auction values, let the draft economy establish itself without your input, and only bid for players you like more than consensus or players who appear to be available at a cheaper price than other comparable players who were awarded earlier in the draft.

The above scenario probably describes a lot of auction drafters. It’s a conservative approach because you’re unlikely to wind up vastly over-spending early in the draft before you have a feel for the market. But you’re also allowing other managers to set the tone of the draft and decide what an appropriate price is on the earliest-nominated players.

You know what’s worse than the wait-and-see approach? Boldly walking into the auction draft following the pre-set auction values in whatever platform you’re drafting on or whichever expert you follow without appropriately calibrating your values to the specific scoring and roster settings of the league you are drafting in.

While I have included a SAMPLE auction values sheet in this article, I want to stress as strongly as possible that you should focus on the process I’m outlining in this piece, and NOT simply skim to the link at the end. If you use the values I placed in the sheet for a league that does not match the scoring settings they’re designed for you will probably have a very bad draft.

In an ideal world, you are neither of these drafters. You walk into the auction with a well-calibrated plan, and you’re sufficiently prepared to act aggressively on your plan or to react dynamically if the room pushes you into a new direction. Auctions are all about quick-thinking and reacting to the market. The best way to respond to a dynamic market on the fly is to do your preparation beforehand, and I hope this piece assists you in doing so.

This is a step-by-step guide of how I would aim to exploit the opportunities available in an auction draft in as universally-applicable fashion as possible.