Auction Strategies Part 3

Kellogg's Perspective

Playing to Win

A Guide to Auction Strategy by Greg Kellogg

The Ground Rules

Before any strategy or planning can be intelligently discussed, one must cover the rules that this advice applies to. You see your strategy can vary widely based on differing assumptions. For this article, we will assume a league with the following rules:

1) All teams will be comprised of 16 players.

2) Starting lineups will consist of 1 Quarterback, 2 Running Backs, 2 Wide Receivers, 1 Tight End, 1 Place Kicker and 1 Defensive Team.

3) All player acquisitions, including Free Agent pickups, will be done via an open auction.

4) All teams will have a total Salary Cap of $500.

5) Bids will be in whole dollar amounts.

Special Considerations

These rules force two items on us that require some special consideration. First, a Tight End is required. This means we will definitely want one of the top performers if at all possible. Second, we must bid on all acquisitions. This means we will want to set aside some of our money for Free Agents later in the season.

Knowing the Enemy

To properly prepare, we must have some inkling of what our opponent is thinking. If you are in a brand new league and don’t know any of the other owners, there are still a couple of assumptions that you can make. First, most knowledgeable FFLers place great value on running backs. Also, most people tend to get excited and over spend in the early part of a draft. If you also happen to know that a particular owner is from Texas and an avid Cowboy fan, this type of information can be invaluable. But only if he lets his heart dictate to his brain. Some will, some won’t...the trick is in identifying those who will. It never hurts to try to get to know the other owners before the draft.

Preparation

Preparing for an auction league is very similar to preparing for a standard draft league, in that you want to have current player projections/ratings before you begin your draft. There are many articles available to help you with rating players so I won’t go into that in this piece, but be sure to do it before you begin the auction. Improper preparation will lead to disastrous choices during the draft. You should also have a couple of tools handy on draft day. If at all possible, have an assistant coach with you to help keep up with all the teams during the auction. You should also have a calculator and lots of scratch paper. A white board is nice if you have one available, but if not a simple notebook with a page for each team will suffice. Organization will be crucial to your success. An example of a team page I use is displayed on the next page. It will help you see who is nearing the ends of their funds, who really needs the players being bid upon and who is, in all probability, just bidding you up. This knowledge is critical during bidding with a balance of $500.

THE STRATEGIES

There are several workable strategies that can be used during an auction draft. But before you decide on which one is best for you, let’s go over our special considerations again. We want to ensure that we have money to spend for Free Agents. Many of your opponents will overlook this and fail to save for it. Remember that some of the top players in any year will be overlooked in the draft and picked up as Free Agents. The more you can save for those acquisitions, the better off you will be. I recommend you set aside 20 percent of your total funds for these acquisitions. That will leave you with $400 to spend. There is one strategy where this is not necessary and we will cover it later. We also want to ensure we get one of the top three Tight Ends. But since we know that people tend to overspend early in drafts, we will try to avoid TE’s until later in the draft. We may not be able to prevent early bidding on these individuals, but many people wait until late to get a Tight End. We can help by casually mentioning how important top Running Backs and Quarterbacks are to the success of a team. This is not a lie, but will tend to disguise your true intentions.

h Strategy One - Get ‘em & get ‘em all!

This is the one strategy that does not require a set aside for Free Agents...in fact, it practically mandates against it. In this strategy, you attempt to get three or four superstars and fill the rest of your roster with long shots and sleepers. You should be aware that these superstars will end up costing you 80 percent or more of your money. It is not unusual for a star to go for half of your total cap. You can count on spending $125 at the very minimum for the top stars and $80 for secondary stars.

The biggest star player might cost as much as $300 with a $500 cap. If you choose this option, select your stars carefully, because they will likely be all you have. In my opinion, this is the riskiest strategy to take. In fact, in one of my recent auctions a single owner acquired star player X ($1135 - $4000 cap), star player Y ($870) and star player Z ($770). He had to trade to get player X and ended up paying the other owner $120 for his rights, so in these three players he has spent $2895 leaving him with $1105. Since this league also has minimum salaries by position, he is now in the unenviable position of being able to spend no more than $100 for any one player.

h Strategy Two - Get One and Build Around Him!

This will be the predominant strategy you will find. These people will often overbid for one individual that they feel can dominate their position. Since these Owners only plan on getting one superstar, they can afford to go a bit higher than people using Strategy One. However, bidding is a fickle experience and you never know when a player will slip and another will climb.

In an auction two years ago, player A went for $1135, player B for $1002, player D for $1001 and player E for $870. Player E went cheap because he was the first Running Back bid on, and several owners felt he might not be quite as dominant as in previous seasons. Another slightly lesser back was had for $550, leaving the owner enough to get his one stud to build around. He invested his nest egg player A. Of course this stud was not cheap, coming in at $1200. But with those two, he has his stars and can now fill in with good players to balance his team.

h Strategy Three - Balance is the Key!

This is my favorite strategy, but requires a great deal of touch and finesse to pull off. Your goal here is to build a team that is balanced, while causing your opponents to overspend on the superstars that you really are not after. Using this mode of operandi you will probably not get any of the top 15 to 20 stars, but you should dominate when bidding on players rated 21 to 50. Preparation is paramount. You must have lists of the top 50 players regardless of position, and top 25 of each position.

You also must have a method for tracking what each team is doing throughout the draft. This is absolutely critical. It will tell you if an owner is just bidding you up, or if he truly desires a player. The finesse is in knowing how far you can push up the bidding on the top players without getting them dropped on you.

I start with the premise that I want any player that I bid on, but only at a certain price. If I get the player within that price range, great! If not, I continue bidding. I look closely at three things to determine when to get out.

First, I feel relatively safe when three or more owners (other than myself) are continuing to bid. Most bidding will eventually come down to only two people.

Next, I start reviewing my team pages to see if the owners are genuinely after the player. For instance, an owner with a decent quarterback is probably not truly interested in acquiring a better one at a relatively high price. At some point it becomes obvious he is just bidding the price up.

Last, I check the owners cap number to see how high he can afford to bid. Remember, the early goal is to drive the prices for the superstars up to the point where the other owners cannot afford the second tier players and the top tier Tight Ends. At this point, you may be beginning to doubt my sanity. I mean how can you possibly win without acquiring one of the top 20 players? The rec.sport.football.fantasy newsgroup currently has a draft currently underway.

The only way to pull it off is to get the other owners to overspend on those top twenty players. Now why exactly do we want to put aside $100 that could be used to acquire some of these prime performers? Because some high-scoring players go undrafted in many leagues from year to year. If you have just a few dollars more than your opponents, you will end up with your choice of these players.

Since there are so many second tier players, especially at the wide receiver position, it is important that you not get caught overbidding for these players. Rather, target about twice the number of players you want at each position and look for the bargains. And remember that for this strategy to work, you must ensure that the top players go for top dollar.

So with this in mind, select your strategy, do your preparation and dominate your league!

Bidding Strategy | Bidding Strategy II | Bidding Strategy III | Straight Draft Strategies

Weekly Lineup Strategies | Starting a League | Kellogg's Komments | Positional Strategies
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