Anyone Ever Run A Live, In-Person Auction Draft?

[mjrs]

Myself and a bunch of other guys get together every year to do live drafts for out redraft and keeper leagues, but next year we're starting our first dynasty league. We need some help figuring out how to carry out a live, off-line auction draft for 12 teams. No IDPs, just team defenses. We're all expecting to spend the entire day doing this at a BBQ or something.

How do you organize the bidding? Do you just pick players out of a hat one at a time and let the bidding wars begin? Is it timed? What's the best way? We've talked about a lot of different possibilities, including maybe doing the top players at each position live and the rest offline. Any experience out there?

[Dexter II]

I'm sure there are lots of ways to do it but we usually get together at a bar around a big table and the nomination moves in order around the table. We usually let the champion of the last season make the first nomination.

Once nominated the bid goes around the table. Owners either bid up or pass. Once they pass they are out for that player. Bidding continues until no one raises. Some call this poker style. Open style usually refers to the less orderly bid at any time method. We don't have a set time limit to bid or pass but it usually moves pretty quickly as owners generally know about what they are willing to spend on a given player.

We start with $100 dollars and each owner builds his team how he wants within his salary cap.

I would highly recommend that the commish use a spreadsheet to track owners spend / available dollars so you don't have owners bidding more than they have in their cap.

Hope that helps.