AUCTION LEAGUES

WE GOT YOU COVERED!

OVERVIEW
Should you spend 10% of your bankroll on another hot RB even if you already have your two starters? Is it ever a good idea to be the biggest spender in your league at WR? How about a stud TE like Antonio Gates? What’s his real auction value in your league when the two next best TEs are already taken?

With only 3 or 4 seconds to think it over, how confident are you you’ll always be making the right call in these situations?

Let’s face it, those are fair questions and not always that easy to answer on the fly. The good news is, with pcDrafter you’ll have fact-based answers right at your fingertips.

Without the use of a computer, it’s basically impossible to keep up with all the relevant factors.

While others are experiencing “buyers regret” for overspending on a stud and others are crying because they missed a crucial WR by one dollar, you’ll be on top of all the key factors including your starting lineup requirements, position depth, league size, prior players taken and many other vital parameters that have a huge impact on what you should bid for a player.

In short, pcDrafter will be generating true player values for you and helping you optimize your bankroll given the dynamics underpinning your current auction. It’s a great feeling!

THE FUNDAMENTALS
In auction leagues, owners are not assigned draft positions before the start of the draft. Instead, each owner begins the draft with a certain salary cap and must bid on players. The big issue in an auction league is knowing what to bid on each player. Auction leagues are a bit more difficult in this regard, as a person’s feelings and salary cap management add a different level of complexity (or fun) to the mix.

In some leagues, trades are allowed in auction drafts, and may contain both players and money in an amount agreeable by league rules. As you might guess, pcDrafter is flexible and can handle this and other special situations.

For more, you can even check out our 75-page Users Guide – yes, we’re that committed.

But in reality, the best way to get going with pcDrafter is to do a FREE DOWNLOAD and take it for a test drive. Try a mock draft. Check out all the pull downs and get familiar with the features. You won’t be disappointed and you’ll never go back to paper again.

Unlike the static auction cheat sheets that are found in magazines or posted on websites, pcDrafter will calculate the player prices based on your individual league settings. If you are using pcDrafter during your fantasy draft, pcDrafter will update the projected player price as each new player is drafted. Before the draft, pcDrafter can also generate a Cheat Sheet that will also list the initial player prices that pcDrafter has calculated.

For pcDrafter to properly calculate the price values for your players, you just need to make sure you have entered your league specifics correctly. Things such as team salary caps must be accurate, the correct number of teams in your league, etc. We're all big boys and girls, you'll nail all this with no problem!

SOME HEAVY LIFTING
In a general sense, pcDrafter calculates the player price by dividing the total salary cap for all the league teams among the different positions that will be drafted. Once pcDrafter has calculated the correct amount of money to be allocated to each position, it uses the Power rankings to determine the amount that should be allocated to each player. The amount that is allocated to each player is also limited by the minimum player bid configured in your league, and the maximum player bid that is calculated by using the Price value entered in the Position Configuration dialog. The Price value you enter will determine the number of players from that position to be included in the price.

Once you have set your Price value, you should view the resulting player Price values to ensure that they fall within your league guidelines. If the Price values appear to be favoring a certain position, you can modify your Price value to adjust the results.

When viewing and setting the Price value, you should note the following items:

1. The Price value generated by pcDrafter is the maximum suggested price you should bid for a player. In all cases, you should attempt to pay less for a player then pcDrafter projects, you should not immediately bid the amount proposed by pcDrafter.

2. Any player who would not typically be drafted based on the Price value entered in the Position Configuration dialog will be assigned a Price value that is equal to the minimum player bid amount.

3. As each player is drafted, the Price associated with each player will be adjusted based on the remaining pool of money, and the roster positions that must be filled.

4. If the Power settings are modified, the Price values calculated for each player will also be updated.

SUPER HEAVY LIFTING
Next, we’ll do some super heavy lifting. It’s not light reading, but for completeness, here’s the pcDrafter Auction Price Calculation Algorithm:

1. Based on the league scoring rules, the projected points are calculated for each player.

2. A Simple VBD power ranking is associated to each player. The Simple VBD power is calculated in the following manner:

a. Loop through each position in the league.
b. Based on the number of starters configured, find the baseline value for each position. The baseline value is the average points scored by the top X players. The X number of players is calculated using the formula (number of starters*number of league teams*league draft pattern multiplier)
c. pcDrafter then loops through players at the position and takes their points minus (-) baseline points to calculate the player power.
d. Once that is completed for each position, pcDrafter finds the lowest player score (which will be negative) and add that to all the player power values. This makes all the power values positive.
As the draft progresses and more players are drafted, the baseline number becomes: (number of starters*number of league teams*league draft pattern multiplier) - # of players already drafted.

3. Once we have all the player power values calculated, pcDrafter then begins the real auction value calculations:

a. First we get the total money that will be bid on players by looping through the league teams and summing their remaining salary cap space. (Note that this amount decreases as the draft progresses.)
b. Next, pcDrafter gets the maximum amount of money that can be spent on any one player by taking the highest league team salary cap remaining and subtract the (minimum player bid * # players yet to be drafted by that team). In this way, pcDrafter knows not to allocate more money for a single player than is possible.
c. We then loop through and set all the player prices to 0 to set the baseline.
d. Next pcDrafter loops through each position and does the following:
i. We get the # of players to consider by taking (# of starters * number of league teams) - # of players already drafted
ii. Next, pcDrafter sets the value of any player that is ranked lower than the last power player to the league minimum bid amount.
iii. For every player that should be bid upon, pcDrafter finds a total count of the power values for those players.
e. Once we loop through all the positions, pcDrafter sums all the individual positional position power counts to get a total power count for all the positions.
f. Finally, pcDrafter loops through all the players again who have not already had their price set to the league minimum and assigns them their price based on the function:
price = total_remaining_money * ((player_power/position_power_sum) * (position_power_sum/total_power_sum))
g. At this point, pcDrafter also validates that no player is given a value higher than the maximum bid amount or lower than the minimum bid amount.
h. As each player is assigned this value, the total remaining money is decreased by the price associated with the player.

While the above routine sounds complicated, it takes the computer a blink of the eye to do and it gives you the info you need to gain an edge. In short – it works!



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Note: all forecast data updates after June 1, 2011 will be for subscribers only