Reddit

Let's Talk Min/Max Bids... why is Max Bid Tiebreaker not a thing?August 05, 2020 | 08:23 AM

There's a TLDR at the bottom, and here's the One of the most requested custom draft features of 2020 has been the ability to set and adjust a minimum bid. One of the most controversial aspects of auction drafts is whether or not to have a max bid, and how to handle multiple teams vying for the same player when their max bids are equal. So let's have a fireside chat about these auction draft mechanics and what makes them so challenging. Minimum Bids Minimum bids are pretty straightforward and self-explanatory, to be honest. There only exists a question of how to implement a minimum bid so that it feels natural. The question of feeling natural evolves from the start-of-auction behavior: should the team who nominated the player be automatically given dibs on placing the opening (minimum) bid? Or should the auction start at $0 and let anyone kickoff the bidding action? Traditional auction drafts on ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, and all the other fantasy league sites take the approach that the opening bid belongs to the nominator. I can't tell you how many late-round RBs I've accidentally acquired in an auction draft because I nominated them hoping to empty my leaguemates' wallets, only to watch them take a stretch break as the timer ticks to zero and I win a player I didn't truly want for the $1 minimum. At Drafty, I'm still not sure if either implementation is better than the other. Currently, the nominating team's budget is deducted a roster spot and the minimum bid value when they queue up a player, and reimbursed when that player comes up for auction. This is to ensure that a team has enough budget reserved to place the opening bid. In practice, however, I've observed some confusion over this behavior so it will probably soon change so that there is no reservation nor automatic opening bid. That will be easier to install technologically and easier to understand mechanically. Max Bids Isn't it funny how we commonly abbreviate the word maximum when referring to "max bid" but almost never shorten the word minimum to say "min bid"? There's your shower thought for the day. Max bids are more difficult to calculate than most people expect. Suppose that you have $78 in your budget and 13 roster spots left to fill. If your league doesn't require a full roster and allows teams to spend their entire budget on a single player, it's not hard at all. This would mean a team's max bid is always equal to their remaining budget. Easy.