Fantasy Auction Advice

1. Have a firm idea of the value of every player.
Fortunately, there are plenty of guides out there. Unfortunately, almost all of them are bad. Many will be done for leagues that use different rules than yours does, and almost all of them are not going to be terribly sophisticated with regard to their idea of value. Example: Quarterback A scored 300 fantasy points last year. Quarterback B scored 200. Little has changed about either one's situation for this season. If a list has Quarterback B listed at 2/3rds of the value of Quarterback A, you need to find a different list. There are plenty of quarterbacks available who can give you 200 fantasy points, and they'll be available on the cheap. Only a couple of passers are able to reach 300 points (in most scoring systems) and they have great value. Most lists freely available today underestimate this scarcity value.

2. Realize that a player's value is fluid, not static.
If players are going for more early in the draft than they are on your lists, this means that all the remaining players are going to have to go for less later on. Your approach to the auction needs to reflect this. To handle this effect, you can keep a running tally of how selling values are comparing to your list. The higher this number climbs, the more you'll have to adjust your bids down on later players. If you're a math genius, you should be able to keep track of how this affects your bidding on every player at every point. If you're not, don't worry, just estimating will be fine.

3. Realize that early players generally go for more money than you think they should.
This is because of the nature of auctions, not because the people in your league are idiots. Well, they may be idiots, but this doesn't prove it. In any fantasy auction, a player should be sold for $1 more than the second highest amount anyone thinks they're worth. There is always variation in how much people think a player is worth, and since the price is set by the person who values them second most, in a standard 10 or 12 team league, this is likely to be somewhat higher than the average in most cases. Also, keep in mind, you shouldn't be seeing players going for less than the value you have listed, because in that case, you should have been bidding on them.

What this means is that the running tally I told you to keep in part 2 should always be a tally of how much more players have gone for than they "should" have according to your list.

4. There are 6 possible outcomes on any player. They are, in order of desirability:

1. You buy the player for less than his worth.
2. Someone else buys the player for more than his worth.
3. You buy the player for exactly his worth.
4. Someone else buys the player for his worth.
5. Someone else buys the player for less than his worth.
6. You buy the player for more than his worth.

The wonderful thing about #5 and #6 is that you have the power to prevent them from happening. Your buying a player for more than his worth is the worst possible outcome. So, don't bid more than a player is worth, and you avoid that outcome. Another GM buying a player for less than his worth is bad too. So you can bid above them. Again, problem solved.

This often breaks down later in auctions, unfortunately, as you run low on money, and will not be able to block, or take advantage of every possible deal. Again, don't be too wedded to the values on your original list. A player going for "less than his value" late in an auction may simply mean that the values have shifted down, and the player is going for closer to his new real value.

5. Take advantage of the fact that players generally go for more early than they will later on.
When it's your turn to nominate a player for auction early, pick a player from lower on the list who you don't want. With luck, he'll go for quite a bit more than he'd go for late, sucking money out of your opponents' pockets. You want your favorite sleepers and potential bargains to be proposed later on, when people are cash strapped, and you're more likely to poach them at low prices.

6. Don't get impatient.
Sometimes, players see the best players flying off the board at ridiculously high prices, look at their own bare cupboard, and start making panicked bids at ridiculous prices themselves. Don't. In a fairly standard auction, where you have $200 for 16 players, you can put together a terrific team that doesn't have a single player you originally valued at more than $20 to $25. If you're patient, and the other GMs are going crazy, you'll be raking in a strong team of Pierre Thomases and Sidney Rices later on.

7. Don't be afraid to pay full value for big ticket items early.
While it's never a good idea to overbid early, if you have the chance to get a $50 player for $50, take it. It's the third best outcome, and getting at least one of these top guys early takes the pressure off. It's a lot easier to wind up spending $150 for 15 guys without pressing or taking guys you don't like than it is to spend $200 for 16 guys.