Auction Draft Database
I’ve long touted that the Auction Draft is far superior than the Snake. Not in a pretentious “you’re stupid if you snake draft” sort of way…I just believe the auction is simply more fun.
Pick the first T&R podcast episode of any pre-season, and you’ll be treated with a rant from Pete and myself as to exactly why we love the auction so much. Since we’re already at “dead horse” levels of discussion, I’ll spare you the details.
Suffice it to say that the auction is 1) more intense, 2) more demanding, and 3) more fun.
I compare the auction draft lobby to playing a game of Texas Hold ‘Em with 11 of your buddies while on the trade floor of a New York stock exchange.
In addition to being skilled in the technical aspects of Fantasy Football (valuation, player knowledge, upside, risk/reward), the strongest of auction drafters also make for very good poker players. The auction lobby allows managers to not only strategically draft their own team, but to offensively distort and impact your opponents’ draft using the elements of bluff, price enforcement, forced bids, and market flushing.
The best auction drafter (and poker player) is in control of the table.
I am not the best auction drafter. I am a pretty good one, maybe. But the truth is, it’s hard enough to manage your own draft, budget, and targets. Who has time (or the multi-tasking ability?) to go on the offense and mess with other managers during the draft?
POKERFACE
I built Pokerface as an attempt to draft better, smarter, and more on the offensive. There are hundreds of Fantasy fans more talented and spreadsheet-savvy than I, and I tip my hat to the Excel Gurus who have gone before us to make some pretty salty tools for drafting. Our league Commish’, Peter Ellwood, is one of them.
Unlike many of the tools available, Pokerface is an Access database (not an Excel spreadsheet). This is for several reason.
- I am much more competent in my SQL and database management chops than I am in Excel.
- As a graphic designer, sometimes I value form way over function. While I hope this database functions nicely, I also care deeply about the user interface and its “pretty” factor. Access allows for a much nicer user experience than the cold, hard grids of excel (but hey, if you’re into that sort of thing, no judgement).
- Speed. I needed the amount of data chugging on the fly to keep up with the frenetic pace of the auction draft.
FEATURES
I have a long wish-list of future features to add (and I hope you’ll contribute to that list too). In its current state for the 2018 season, Pokerface offers the following features:
The Dashboard
Set your league’s settings, manager info, and your choice of default settings for My Values.
Budget
From a “drafting my own team” perspective, this is probably the most helpful feature. I can set my draft budget (and adjust on the fly if necessary). While drafting, I can place the players I’ve purchased directly into their assigned slots. The Budget form will calculate my cash balances as well as the over/under for value and needed adjustments.
The Manager Box
This is where the magic happens. The Manager Box allows me to keep an eye on 3 manager’s drafts at one time (and I can quickly hop between any manager on any box). In addition to tracking the typical stats, such as the manager’s acquisitions, balances, player details, etc., the real poker power of the Manager Board (and the overall value of this database to me) is the display of the following Manager stats that I “invented” for the purpose of screwing with my opponents’ drafts.
1) Tilt. A manager’s Tilt and Tilt Rank are the simplest of stats in the lineup. Tilt is simply the number of transactions out of the last 12 that a manager has owned. This is helpful in a draft to judge the “sincerity” of a manager’s bids. Tilt Rank is simply how this manager compares to the other managers in the league.
The master tilt bar, however, displays how many transactions a manager has owned out of the TOTAL draft. This shows “progression” at a glance, to how far along a manager is in their draft.
2) FPC and MVC. These are value comparison averages and ranks for both Fantasy Pros values as well as My Values. These stats are INCREDIBLE during a draft, and if I use them right, it’s *almost* cheating.
The golden goose of the auction draft is VALUE: what is a player worth to you and to others. Managers go to great lengths to guard their valuation secrets and algorithms. Essentially, the FPC and MVC stats allow me to have a very good statistical hunch about my opponents’ values for a given player on the block. This gives me the edge, not only on defense (getting good deals in my own lineup) but on offense (price enforcing to the MAX, catered specifically to piss off one bidding manager at a time!).
3) Degree of Desperation. Of all the opponents’ stats I’m tracking, this one is the most fun. It’s certainly the most epically named. The Degree of Desperation is an algorithm that calculates a given manager’s need by position, based on the availability of top-ranked players for that position. For instance, if you only have 2 wide receivers, but there are only 3 of the top 36 WRs available, you, my friend, are pretty desperate.
The Degree of Desperation, when combined with the FPC/MVC stats, are incredibly helpful and very “offensive” in nature. By looking at a manager’s DoD, I can assess not only their hunger/seriousness for a player on the block, but what they’re willing to (over)pay for that player. Evil? Maybe. Effective? You betcha.
In addition to being a big help statistically, the Degree of Desperation also provides a key poker element to the draft: intimidation. In my league, everyone who can travels to Dallas to be in the same room for the draft. With this tool, I love getting to inform my opponents how desperate they are, mathematically by position, at any given point.