a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

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dabigtrain
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Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:44 am

a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

Post by dabigtrain »

A common suggestion: "Why can't we have a live amateur draft, like I do in my fantasy football league?"
The common response: "Almost impossible to schedule. More trouble than it's worth. You're somehow going to get everyone on the phone?"

I think I might have a way it could work. Right now, the draft is run automatically at a particular time; it appears to take seconds to complete. It's probably very simple code. Anyway, I think you could do a live draft if you:
- set a time for the beginning of the draft,
- let owners either set their preferences the way the do now,
- schedule a delay of one minute between each pick, and
- let owners either do nothing and let the draft happen, or log in and update their draft rankings on the fly as they see fit.

So, it would take 80 minutes instead of seconds. Big deal.

So this way, you can let it go on autopilot, or you can log in at the appropriate time and watch it happen. When you set 10 pitchers as your top 10 draftees, and you get one of them and don't want another, you have time to reset your rankings before your next pick rolls around. When you've finished the first two rounds and don't really care about 3, 4, and 5, you can leave it alone. When you see the one guy you really want get picked, you can pull the trigger to trade away your pick (obviously, only if the other owner is on line or you have to trade ready to execute).

Setting this here for discussion/revision by other experienced owners...
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ballmark
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Re: a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

Post by ballmark »

Come to the Tony Conigliaro League next time we have an opening. We ignore what ABE does (mostly) and do a manual draft for the first two rounds via message board and Google Docs, then swap the players picked amongst each other to get them to the right rosters.
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Vytron
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Re: a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

Post by Vytron »

dabigtrain wrote: Wed May 22, 2019 4:43 pm - set a time for the beginning of the draft
The crux is that it's impossible to schedule it at a time where it's fair for everyone. Not with 16 players. There will be a time where a drafter will need urgently a Catcher or something, and will prioritize getting it, but another in the same situation would be asleep, or wouldn't be able to attend at the time for whatever reason, and then the whole thing will depend on availability.

For all the problems the current draft has, at least it's fair, at the moment they draft, whoever has that catcher on top will get it, no matter who is online or who can attend, and that's important.
SquidJordan wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 12:09 am all you can do is all you can do.
Vytron wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 10:01 pm Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about
dabigtrain
Posts: 557
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:44 am

Re: a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

Post by dabigtrain »

I wouldn't suggest every league change to this sort of draft; I just think it's a feature worth exploring.

The "impossible to schedule at a time where it's fair" objection doesn't quite hold water with me; if you were forced to run your league's draft that way, sure, that's a problem. But if it's just a feature of the league - "our draft is at 8:00 Eastern on the day after the OS runs" - you can buy into such a league or not. Don't ever want to do that sort of draft? Don't buy the team. Want the option? Go ahead. Unable to make the scheduled time this season because your mother-in-law is watching and already thinks you're a bozo? Set the preferences ahead of time and let the draft run without you. You won't be any worse off than you are with the standard draft, and if you're able to get her out of the house at 7:45, you can participate in an improved draft.
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Vytron
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Re: a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

Post by Vytron »

As it is, with leagues welcoming players from all around the world, they're struggling to fill up and Bots are taking them over, so I'd expect even more struggle if they required players in the time zone of the live draft.

But, yeah, in theory this could work, I suggest doing it the other way around, search for 15 other players that'd agree to the same live draft time zone, or that don't care about it, once you have them get in contact with Admin to create your league with a live draft, I'm sure for these 16 subscriptions he'd implement something.
dabigtrain wrote: Mon Jun 03, 2019 4:29 pm Set the preferences ahead of time and let the draft run without you. You won't be any worse off than you are with the standard draft
If people aren't worse off with a standard draft then what's the point of a live draft? Isn't it to get some players you wouldn't get otherwise? Then it's an advantage to be there live.

So what about this? Exactly the way you suggested except:

A draft takes 24 hours instead of 80 minutes.

So for the entire day a player is drafted every 18 minutes, giving everyone ample time to take advantage of the live draft for the time that they're online, and make adjustments. The only person taking full advantage is that freak that stays awake the full duration of this just to get the best possible drafting, but by that time it's more effort put than lucky time zone.
GM33
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Re: a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

Post by GM33 »

Another sim site that I used, prior to finding SimD, conducted the draft in this manner, whereby the draft ran all day with a scheduled time for each pick. So you could login and change your draft list at any point between your own picks. Or if you wanted to set it and forget it, you could do that as well. The drafting is the only feature that I enjoyed more on the other site. Not to say I dislike the current SimD drafting, it's just a bit more fun to have the option of making changes as the draft goes based on prior picks.
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Vytron
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Re: a way to do a live-ish amateur draft

Post by Vytron »

It's good to know another site is using live draft with success. So the concept works and it may be better than what we have.
SquidJordan wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 12:09 am all you can do is all you can do.
Vytron wrote: Sun May 22, 2022 10:01 pm Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about
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