how to nominate players in your auction draft

I believe that nominations are the single most important part of an auction draft. As mentioned above, who you nominate and how you bid are the two things within your control at an auction. We will discuss bidding, which is also important, but with bidding you should have a budget that is going to constrain your bidding on some level, and once you get comfortable and develop bidding styles that work for you, it is primarily just executing them. With nominations, the longer an auction goes, the more important they become. As you get to the end of your auction, the amount of game theory that goes in to when or when not to nominate players you want increases dramatically. While it may be difficult to nominate perfectly every auction, you want to limit as many missteps as you can in order to fill out your team with the players you really want. How you spend your auction dollars will also determine how much control you have at the end of your auction, which we will discuss below.

There are multiple strategies available when nominating players. 

The first two obvious choices are to:

1. Nominate players you actually want to get on your team
2. Nominate players you have no interest in, in order to drain other competitors’ resources.

The tips below will explore which strategy may work best for you, and some subtle nuances you can take advantage of in your auction draft. The two things you control in an auction draft are your nominations and bids. You do not want to waste your nominations, so make sure you nominate with purpose depending on how you want to build your squad. You may also find that certain strategies work better at different phases of the auction, or depending on how much of your auction budget you have remaining.

Try to determine what your overall strategy for building your team will be. How you want to construct your team will make a difference in who you nominate, and when. There are two basic strategies for building a team at an auction draft. The first approach is known as “Stars and Scrubs” or “Studs and Duds.” This is where you spend 80-90% of your budget on your starting players (Excluding kickers and defenses) and then use the rest to buy your bench players, your kicker and defense. The second is the balanced approach, where you try to spread your budget out over as many good, but not usually great, players as possible. If multiple people are using the first strategy, it should leave many middle tier players available at reasonable prices. I believe when building a team through an auction draft, you need to end up with a roster that, at minimum, has players that would have been taken in every round of a snake-style draft. Now I believe, that you can actually end up with more higher round players if you purchase wisely at your draft auction, but you need to be willing to spend a little more to get a first round, or at least a couple of second round talents on your team. This is similar to actual NFL teams. I think for the cost, many NFL teams would be happy with 2 second round picks, over 1 first round pick. Many scouts will say there are only 15 truly top level talents each draft, and since the good teams are rarely drafting there, it is more economical to pay two second round draft picks over one first round pick. The same can be said in auction drafts. If you avoid paying $70 for one player, it may be possible to spend $30 each for three second round talents that give you a better chance to win.

The very first player, and maybe two, who sells at your auction will probably be slightly undervalued. Most bidders at auctions, including those at a fantasy auction, take a few sales to get warmed up to the auction action. Many people don’t want to be the first bidder or buyer at an auction. Part of the reason to wait is to try to determine what the market is going to be for different tiers of players. If all the top running backs in your league sell for $25, no one wants to be the buyer of the first running back who overpaid at $40. However, because more people tend to be cautious at the beginning of an auction and avoid overpaying, the first player or two will most likely end up being a bargain. Now, if your entire league reads this, that would no longer be the case, and if they put up the consensus number one player first, this may not happen. If you have the chance to nominate one of the first two or three players and can nominate someone in the middle of the top tier of running backs or wide receivers, I think, more often than not, you will get a good deal. This works for two reasons. First, as stated above, many managers are not sure how much they want to spend on players at the beginning of the auction. Second, if you don't nominate one of the perceived top 2 or 3 people at a position, many members of your league may want to wait and bid on these top players, meaning they won't bid against you. This can also happen slightly after the first few players or rounds in the auction when the first player of a position group is nominated. The market has not been set at this position, which means the first player offered may be a bargain. 

You may want to nominate players you want at the beginning of the auction. For most top-tier players, the players that would go in the first two or three rounds of a snake draft, you are never really going to get a great deal, so there is no point on waiting to bid on the top tier players you want on your team. In normal auctions, when we have similar items, we always sell the best one first. This is because we do not want potential buyers to wait on the best item, and not bid on the lesser ones. If they wait, and then the item they wanted goes higher than they want to pay, they end up going home with money in their pocket. When it comes to draft auctions, at the start of the auction, every manager's pockets are full of money. If they are waiting on a certain top player to be nominated, they may not bid on players they think are slightly less valuable. This gives you the opportunity to get the second, third or fourth player in a top position tier with less competition, and therefore a lower price than other players in that tier. Once the top player in a tier is sold, everyone knows what the market is for that auction draft, and adjusts accordingly. If you are willing to go out and get your player early, especially top tier talent, you may be able to save a dollar or two to use later in the auction. If you nominate a top tier player you do not want on your team, you are in some ways helping the other managers in your league fill out their rosters and determine values for the remaining players. This is more true of positions like QB and TE which usually have only one starter, especially when only RB's and WR's have been offered. You don't want your competition to get a feel for what the prices should be for every position. Never be afraid to go get the players you want early in your auction draft. If you don't buy any of the top players, this obviously saves you money, and puts you in a place to control the middle and end of the draft auction action. However, you will probably only end up with several mid-tier players that will not score enough points on a weekly basis for you to win your league. 

You may want to nominate players you don’t want as you get into the middle part of your auction draft. This can be especially true of mid to upper-tier players you don't like. This is not new advice, but if you are budget-conscious, you need to follow this strategy all the way to its conclusion. First, if you know members of your league like certain players who you think are overrated, injury prone, or on the decline, nominate them towards the mid rounds in order to get money out of other mangers’ hands. Second, if you think a position like quarterback is deep, keep nominating quarterbacks to drain your fellow competitor's resources so you can purchase running backs or wide receivers at a cheaper price. The key is to nominate players that most people think should be on a team, will go for more than a $1 nomination, and get your competitors to spend their money on players you don't want, leaving less money in the room for you to buy the players you do want. If you are nominating kickers in the first round of your draft, it is a wasted nomination. If you want to do this correctly, once you start nominating players you don't want, continue to do so until there are only a couple of other people left with money. If you do this correctly, you will never purchase any player you nominate until your last few roster spots. This does not mean you don't bid on a player or two that comes up, but your goal is to try to control the late middle and end of your draft, and then be able to get 3-4 players way below market value to fill our your team.

A word of caution on this strategy. It is highly unlikely you will be the only manager in your league trying to not buy players you nominate. This means, that even as the auction winds down, and you have saved a fair amount of your salary cap, there will still be one or two other managers that have similar amounts of money. You will still probably have to compete with these managers, so try not to overpay for lesser players at the end of the auction when you could have been more competitive at the beginning of the auction on better players. There is also a school of thought that you want to be careful nominating too many players that other people want. If you have your top running back, and there is only one top running back on the board, there may be two or three managers that want that player. They may be waiting to bid on that player, and as long as you do not nominate that player, they will not bid on a lesser tier of player. This means you may be able to nominate a middle tier player or a player at another position and roster them cheaper than you could if you nominated the top player first. Once that top player is gone, the two managers that did not get that player will now move to the next tier of players and bid against you, which will probably cost you more money. 

If you are trying to purchase values at your auction, it is not going to be on players everyone loves. It is difficult to get a deal on any auction item if there are a lot of bidders. Simply put, more bidders equal more competition, which equals higher prices. You want to nominate the more popular players, whether it is because of the previous year’s stats or because they play for your hometown team. This will get other managers to purchase them and leave you with more money to buy the players you really want. You want to purchase players with as little as competition as possible, so nominating a player with a perceived wart or two helps your chances to get them on your team. It is helpful to have a list of players you want to nominate going into your auction. This list would ideally be split into two parts, players you want and players you don't want. You don't want to have to think about your nominations in the middle of the draft, so having a list of both types of players allows you to decide whether or not you want to buy a player based on the ways things are going, or whether you need to wait and nominate someone you don't want. It is okay to nominate and buy popular players, especially the first two or three rounds of your auction draft.

Be willing to nominate handcuffs you like early. Once someone has spent good money on a starting running back, they are going to be more invested in buying their backup. If there are backups you like, don’t be afraid to nominate them before the starter in front of them. Most people will be hesitant to purchase backups if they don’t have their starting backfield set. If there is a backup you absolutely have to get on your team, try doing it early. Like buying cheap players early, this will also give you clarity later in the auction, as you will already know how much you had to spend on some of your cheaper players.  

Wait to build depth, don’t wait to build your starting lineup. First, there is usually no benefit to having any of your auction money left after the auction. While you could use your last $10 to pay $5 each for a kicker and defense, you should only be paying $1 or on rare occasions $2 each for these positions and you should be using that money elsewhere. You have the opportunity in an auction draft to get several of what we term late round flyers in traditional drafts. If you save 20% of your budget for the end, you will be able to pay $4 or $5 for a flyer, when everyone else can only afford $1 or $2. This can give you an advantage in potentially picking up several younger players with upside that you may only be able to get 1 or 2 of in a traditional draft. By doing this you can get four or five tenth round values, and not have any higher round players on your team. However, while getting bench players that hit may help put you over the top in your league, you are probably not going to win your league if you don’t have true early-round talent on your team. While you can buy one or two backup running backs or wide receivers early, you do not want to buy too many backup players before you have all of your starting players, with the exception of kickers and defenses. If you are in a standard league and can only start one QB, it could be a mistake to buy another QB before you have purchased all of your RB's, WR's and flex position players. While getting a second QB at a great value may seem like a good thing, if you are using a limited budget at the end of the auction on a backup when you still need a starter, it does not help you be successful. You need to spend the majority of your auction budget on players that will start for your team the most amount of weeks. While an auction allows a little more flexibility in building a roster than a snake draft, make sure you are saving and spending enough money to get high-quality starters on your team. The last thing you want is to be laying awake after your auction draft wishing you would have rostered more of the higher-end players on your team. Auctions allow you to decide who is on your team, so go out and get the players you want!

Once you have your starters, you need to have planned on how you want to fill out the rest of your roster. Based on your specific league rules, you may have roster limits or requirements, so make sure you are meeting these as you go. Again, you can plan on paying $1 for a kicker and defense at the end of your draft, and most likely your last two bench spots will be $1 or $2 players. You need to know what positions you want to fill our your roster. Do you want backup QB's and TE's? How many players do you want at each position? What positions do you want your backups to be?  Do you want to draft a bunch of upside RB's and hope one hits? The key is to know what positions you want at each spot on your roster. You don't want to bid on a third QB that is super cheap, if that is going to keep you from having an extra RB or WR that you will probably play more through the year. League dynamics differ, but you should rarely go into an auction thinking about purchasing players to trade later, you need to focus on building a team you think can win. I will fill out 4 or 5 different rosters based on spending money at different spots, and then try to narrow my build down to 2 or maybe 3 potential rosters, and then focus on purchasing players to fill the roster out that way if at all possible. You always have to be flexible in auction drafts, but you also have more control than a snake draft to build your team the way you want. So stay focused on the types of players and positions you want on your roster, and don't worry too much about other managers getting some deals on players that don't fit your build. 

It is very important before your draft to determine how you want your roster to look at the end of your draft. As your auction progresses, you want to make sure you are getting the players you want on your roster. As you get further along in your auction, you will get to a point where you should only nominate players you want on your roster. If you know you want a second QB, once every other manager has a QB, you should nominate your second QB (You can also buy one someone else has nominated). You want to avoid nominating a cheap player that doesn't fill a role on your ideal roster, as you may get stuck with that player in the later rounds of your auction. 

Pay attention to everyone’s rosters and know your current competition. As the auction progresses, different people will fill out their rosters at different paces than others. Whichever strategy you employ, be mindful of the others who need players at the same position you do. Your competition will shift throughout the auction, but is most important in the first ten rounds of bidding. A great way to track this, and fair way, is to use FanDraft's software. With FanDraft, you can project a draft board that is color coded with each team's roster, and also shows how much money they have spent, and how much they have left. Using this makes it easy to see which positions have a surplus, which have a shortage, which mangers need the same positions you do, and how your remaining money compares to theirs. This is key in the middle of the draft as it will allow you to be in the strongest position to nominate players you need to fill out your roster with the least competition. At the end of the draft, this is also important as you need to know if you and other managers both have $2 for one roster spot and only $1 for the rest of your team. You need to know when to bid $2 to start, so they cannot out bid you. Or if you have $7 or $8 left for one good player, make sure you bid your max amount before someone else does and you miss out because they bid first. If a competing manager has $4 left on a player, and you have that much or more, if you bid $4 before they do, they cannot raise the bid on you.   

At the beginning of your auction draft, it is fine to nominate players at roughly half their value. If you are nominating the top players in the first few rounds when the room is full of money, you are not usually going to get caught with a player you don't want. If you don't really know how players are valued in a given draft, then it is better to error on the lower side for your nominations. As the draft progresses, you may want to lower your nomination amount, especially if you do not want a player you are nominating. It is a horrible feeling when you are a few rounds into your auction draft and you nominate someone for $10 or $15 and no one else bids. Maybe it was a good bid and just big enough to scare everyone off, or maybe you just overpaid by double. You may never know what you could have maybe bought that player for. Towards the end of the draft, there is usually no benefit to nominating anyone over $1, until you get to the very end, when you may want to nominate at a specific number so no one else can out bid you. As noted above, another bad feeling is when you have a sleeper you have been waiting to nominate your entire draft, and you do it for $1, and then the one other manager that can bid $2 does so just to spite you and steal your player. So it is important at the end of your draft to know who else can bid more than $1 on a player and see what their roster looks like and make sure if you really want someone, nominate that player at the max number anyone else can give, and you are guaranteed to get your player.