One key “advanced” move that some owners learn over time is that any time you are in first place, you should always place a $1 bid on any player up for auction that you don’t want to own. It sounds strange, but assuming you didn’t initiate the auction, the player will always be won by the team lower in the standings in the case of a tie bid, so you have nothing to lose by placing a $1 bid (the team initiating the auction will be awarded the player for $1 if you are the only other team to place a bid), and everything to gain by driving up the price (even by $1) on your competition.
Again, you must be in first place for this strategy to work…
This is correct advice, and the corollary is that if you’re in any place other than first, you should bid what you are willing to spend on a player - if you bid too much, you may be forced to pay!
let’s say I’m Team A in first place…Team B currently in second place nominates a Player for $1,Team C in third place bids $1…then I bid the $1 you’re suggesting
So we have three teams, all with $1 bids…
Doesn’t Team C win the auction at $1 by virtue of being in third place, and Team A’s $1 bid didn’t affect the final auction price at all…my bid didn’t drive the final price to $2 any more
In that situation bidding $1 doesn’t affect anything, but imagine Team B bids $5 on a player instead. If you don’t bid $1 on that player, and no one else places a bid, Team B wins the player for $1. If you do place a $1 bid as the first place team, Team B wins that player for $2 instead.
And yes in this scenario team C wins the player for $1. Which is fine, because everyone valued the player at $1 and the last place of those teams got the player.
There have been times where I have bid $2 as the 1st place team wondering if someone would bid $3. The idea being that even if I ended up winning at $2 and just cut the player, the original bidder would prob just rebid at $1 anyway so there’d be little risk as far as cap hit for me. You can probably only do this for a hot player you know would be reauctioned quickly as opposed to a prospect type.
and conversely, understand that the first (or highest) place team loses ALL ties, so first place teams need to bid more than perceived value for players they want…so teams lower in the standings should use auction bidding on good players to keep the top guys “honest”