So far in our series on auction drafts, we’ve taken a look at the basic mechanics of the format and a set of tactics to follow to set you up for success on draft day. Let’s shift focus to some of the challenges you’re likely to face during your draft and what you can do to mitigate them.
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Potential Pitfalls of a Fantasy EPL Auction Draft
With something as action-packed and competitive as an auction draft, mistakes are bound to happen. A successful draft comes down to whether you can keep the number of poor decisions you make to a minimum. Here are some of the traps I’ve fallen into in my own auction drafts that you should be aware of before you jump into the draft room:
Going in without a backup plan
If you’ve taken part in any draft, regardless of format, you’ll know that no amount of preparation can make it so draft day goes 100% according to plan. While having your strategy sorted pre-draft is vital, it may even be more essential to know what you want to do if (when) things don’t work out how you had envisioned. Not having the flexibility to pivot to an alternative approach can make it so all of the prep work you did leading up to this moment flies out the window in an instant, and leave you in a position where you’re primed to make mistakes.
Let’s run through a scenario that could very easily happen. You head into the auction with a strategy to go all-out to roster two elite players—Harry Kane and Joao Cancelo—and fill the rest of your squad with players from the bargain bin. The draft begins and, as you expected, Mo Salah and Heung-Min Son are the first players to be nominated. You hold off on bidding as you wait for your main striker target in Kane.
You pass on KDB and TAA as well, knowing England’s captain is likely to be next on the block. But, in a shocking twist, Joao Cancelo is the next player to be nominated. You spring into action and win the bidding war for the City defender, thrilled that you’re halfway to your goal. But when Kane is nominated, the bids keep climbing well past your valuation. Reluctantly, you let the countdown clock expire and your top target goes to a rival. Even worse, all of the players who you’ve valued similarly to Kane are already gone.
Sticking with your strategy at this point would mean overspending on a player you don’t value as highly and waiting while dozens of good to great players pass you by so you can afford to complete the rest of your squad. Make sure you’re prepared to move away from your Plan A and that you’ve thought through how you’ll approach your Plan B.
Getting distracted by the chat
One of the best parts of being in a season-long draft league is the opportunity to get to know your league mates, and especially to join in on some good-natured banter. The rivalries and ribbing often begin in the draft room, as Fantrax has a chat feature for you to communicate to your fellow managers over the course of the draft.
This is a fun feature in slow drafts and even between picks in a live draft using the serpentine format, but I’d recommend staying away entirely during the auction given how quickly things can happen. There isn’t really a time “between picks” during the auction, particularly early on while most of the high-value players are being nominated and bids are flying, so trying to follow along with the conversation or add your own reply is a high-risk distraction. In the time it takes you to read a message and type your response, you could miss a player disappearing off the board.
Especially since managers can hold off on nominating players they really want until later in the draft (without the fear of another manager picking them up before they can), losing track of which players are available is a recipe for disaster in auction leagues. There’s no worse feeling than thinking a player you’ve got your eye on is going under the radar and can be had for a cut-rate price, then going to nominate them and finding they’re not in the player pool.
Kudos to the team at Fantrax for their updated draft room, which allows you to separate the activity feed from the chat (a nightmare of a combination for anyone in past seasons who attempted to have a conversation between dozens of bid notifications), but even with these two streams separated, I advise you to stay away from the chat and follow the activity feed to make sure you don’t miss players. Save the banter for afterwards, where you can gloat about how much better you drafted!
Spamming the minimum bid button
Once a player has been nominated to the auction block and bidding opens, everyone has the opportunity to bid, either by entering a custom amount to increase the bidding to or by increasing the bid by the minimum bid increment (generally speaking, $1). Placing a custom bid requires typing in the amount, where as the minimum bid is a simple button you can click to place your next bid.
Especially in the case of the elite players who multiple managers are bidding on, the extra step to place the custom bid can become frustrating, as the price you decide on can be exceeded by the time you’re able to type it and submit, so managers typically default to using the minimum bid button.
There’s a downside to being able to click a button to increase the bid, though, and it’s that it’s very tempting to click it multiple times in quick succession for a player who hasn’t yet met your valuation. It’s rare, but on more than one occasion I’ve seen a manager place an extremely high custom bid during a frenzied bidding war and another $1 increase come in immediately after from a manager who was furiously clicking the minimum bid button, leaving them with far less of their auction budget than they would have liked.
Dropping a bomb like this is an extremely risky strategy, but it is a very painful trap to be on the receiving end of. Remember to be patient. The countdown clock resets every time a new bid comes in, so it won’t hurt to take a couple seconds to see what the bid is before you act.
Bidding up players you don’t want or need
As with the “bid bomb” above, there are a lot of cutthroat strategies and mind games that managers can employ to make things more difficult for their fellow drafters during the auction, one of which is bidding up a player that’s being perceived as below market value. This approach is beneficial to keep opponents from securing valuable assets at a bargain rate, but it can come at a cost.
This tactic doesn’t usually come into play until the second half of the draft, when the majority of budgets have been exhausted and available roster spots are dwindling. If you decide to bid on a player to increase their purchase price for an opponent and they decide not to continue bidding, you’re stuck with that player. You may have a low-cost player on your hands, but they could take up a positional spot you were saving for one of your late-round targets. You’re better off focusing on the players you want rather than getting in the way of your opponents.
Dwelling on past bids
Let me state this clearly: There will be at least one decision during your draft that you’ll regret. Whether it’s because you let a player you really wanted go to another manager, you get caught up in a bidding war and overpay or fall victim to another manager’s mind games, regret is a foregone conclusion in this format.
The key to success in an auction draft is to keep a level head, and thinking about what you could or should have done differently only serves as a distraction that your opponents can take advantage of. If you make a mistake, take a deep breath and look ahead to your next move. How you draft is an important component to your success in your league, but it’s by no means the end-all, be-all. Make the most of your remaining decisions in the draft, and look for a fix afterwards.
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