Fantasy Football: Auction Draft

[kstu]

So my main FF league just made the move to an auction draft format. I've been looking at a few sites for draft values trying to put together my cheat sheet. One question I have is about how to weight the values for our league settings. Whereas the various sites all say this is for X-teams (usual 10 or 12) with a Y-cap (usually 100 or 200), I need to weight the values for our own 14-team, 200-cap league.

I saw here, a rule the author stated that the value of the top 50 players in the draft should equal ~83% of the total cap pool (# of teams * cap):

[FONT=verdana,helvetica,arial][FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica]The top 50 players should represent about 83 percent of the total money available in the auction system. So a league with 10 teams with a starting amount of $100 has a pool of $1000. $830 dollars give or take should be spent on the top 50 players.

Following this rule puts Chris Johnson in the $90-$100+ range or about 45%-50% of the cap for a single team.

Does this seem about right? Too high? I definitely don't think it's too low. Any other tips/advice you feel like sharing? Good links?

Thanks.
[/FONT][/FONT]http://www.ideamarketers.com/?Fantasy_football_2010_magazine_auction&articleid=1116596

 

[KeithTalent]

ESPN's cheat sheet has him at $60: http://games-ak.espn.go.com/s/ffldr...f?addata=2010=ffdft_cht_sht_dollarcentral_xxx

I've never done an auction, so I know little about it, but that value you have for Johnson sounds way high.

I really want to try an auction draft. :hmm:

KT

 

[FallenHero]

Uhg. You and your league bought yourself a bigger headache then listening to justin beiber for a year on repeat.

If you want to win in auction, prepare to make some prime picks and make sure no one else is on to them. Do your research, as you can get a really good team without maxing out. Otherwise, bidding wars will start for Cop Speed, AP, Manning, Brees, MJD, and Ray Rice. You are probably talking 80-100 for the top guys. I'd almost wait and spend more on a slightly lower teir RB/QB and outbid everyone for a team that can consistently put up 100+ points rather then 1 player going bananas and hoping your other players don't die.

 

[jaha2000]

Sounds about right.
We have done an auction league for 5 years or so. There are two ways to go about it.
1. Go for bust and get 2 marque players and then fill your squad with dudes for a buck
2. Get a squad of average cost dudes (10 bucks in our $100 league).

I will tell you that the two years i have one, i went with option 2.
BTW, a 14 team auction draft is going to take a LONG time. Our 8 man, with 1 QB. 2RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 D and 7 bench players takes 2 hours. I would guess its going to be around 4 hours or so. Why you guys going with 14? That's a lot of teams for FFL

 

[sactoking]

The more teams in the league, the more the top players should go for, as a % of the available money.

Some pointers on auction leagues:
Assign values to players NOT based on total points scored but instead based on point differential over the next player on your board at that position. Ex: Brees and Manning are your #1 and 2 QB and Johnson and Peterson are your #1 and 2 RB. You project 410 points for Brees, 400 points for Manning, 350 points for Johnson, and 325 for Peterson. The mistake would be to assign higher dollar values to Brees and Manning because they get more points. The correct way to do it is to assign a higher dollar value to Johnson because if you miss out on him and get Peterson you LOSE 25 points but if you miss out on Brees and get Manning you only lose 10 points.

Every auction I've done has assigned each owner a number, and that number is used to determine the order in which players are nominated. So, if I'm owner #1 it's my job to nominate the first player to be auctioned. This leads to two main strategies. One is to nominate big-name, overrated players early. The hope is that people overbid and it takes money off the table for value later on. The other is a bit trickier, but can really pay off. You assume that everyone else will nominate big-name players first. You use that by nominating a bunch of $3-6 guys. Since a nomination opens with a bid of $1 you can sneak in some really good value early by filling out your backups for $1 each with guys that might be worth considerably more. You will miss out on the superstars that way, but you will have enough money to control the 2nd tier player values.