What are the problems with someone purposefully not nominating in the auction draft?

I don’t think there is much advantage to missing the auction or nominations EARLY but early means like 2-3 rounds at most.

After that it’s definitely a significant advantage to not nominate but still bid. The advantage comes from being able to wait out other people nominating players you don’t want and filling up their roster/budget so that when you DO nominate you win everyone for $1. When you nominate you have to determine if you’re putting up a player you like and risking getting outbid or if you’re putting up a player you DON’T want and risking getting stuck with that player. It’s absolutely the “best strategy” to just let others nominate, bid if you want, and let other people fill up while you just wait.

The problem of course is then no one would nominate so you have to require teams to nominate if they plan to participate at all.

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I went through that today. One owner came in one hour late… The commissioner let him do it. At one point late in the draft .I had $15 left and he had $200 left an we were bidding on the same player. . Before the draft, another owner wrote that he couldn’t make the start but wanted to join the draft later for a couple of rounds. I wrote the commissioner and he reminded everyone that you are not supposed to miss nominations. At one point we only had 8 owners participating in a 12 team league. I understand that this is just a game an people have busy lives but if you sign up you should want to do your best for the good of the league.

Showing up on time is just the right thing to do,

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Skipping nominations is annoying/rude and provides a competitive advantage later in the auction. Not sure the technical feasibility of such a feature, but I wish Ottoneu had a “three strikes and your out” option rather than the “one and done” or unlimited chances. You can of course enforce three chances manually (or whatever threshold), but it’s a pain for the commisioner to keep track and enforce.

Fortunately, out of three auctions so far, I can count on one hand the number of total missed nominations combined (have a fourth one tonight). I’m pretty fortunate in the quality of leaguemates. None of the leagues play with the one-and-done rule.

Niv would it be possible to have “auto-nominations”? If you miss your nomination someone from your queue or the highest rostered free agent is nominated for you? Not sure if that solves it but may help and would be similar to snake drafts

If Draft Bots are battle-tested and found reliable, commissioners will be able to add Draft Bot proxies for human managers next season.

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I think there is one situation where it doesn’t matter. If the manager in question only has $1 per open spot then it doesn’t matter too much (except to them) if they come in at the end or not. They will automatically have to take what whatever is left over by other players. It really only hurts them since they couldn’t try to be the first bidder on their preferred $1 players.

Not necessarily, they still don’t have to nominate any players and risk 1.using a roster spot on someone they aren’t interested in or 2. Losing a player they are interested in to a team who can bid $2. Teams should not be allowed to skip nominations no matter the situation. That’s how I manage the drafts I commission for.

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Yeah I agree that it’s still an advantage. And it also wastes other people’s time. If you want to fill your roster with $1 players, then log out of the draft and choose from who is left via 48 hr auctions. But sticking around and intentionally missing nominations is just rude.

I really like the concept of a bot bid to keep people honest and on task.

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1- hit pause at a couple seconds left on the nomination clock. 75% of the time they are working on getting the nomination in with the clock ticking down. 25% of the time they just lost track of the order and are ready as soon as they see the pause.

2- if a manager is popping in and out, quickly turn of their draft, if they log in and explain the connectivity issues, turn them back on. They can’t bid so that takes away part of the strategy to miss nominations.

A nomination bot would kill the random nature of Ottoneu. At the end of the draft basically the same player pool would be owned everywhere. It would be like ESPN, everything the same everywhere, yuck.

This thread is about how managers gain an advantage by skipping parts of the draft and joining later or skipping nominations. If you want to talk about the draft bots, you can leave your thoughts on the relevant thread:

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Ok. Really more of a related thought than any sort of a thesis.

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Just trying to respect what @legendaryan wanted, which is some general consensus that they can point to next time someone in their league tries to claim its ok to just nominate some guys in a draft after everyone else is gone. Think we’ve met that criteria!

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If the manager in question only has $1 per open spot then it doesn’t matter too much (except to them) if they come in at the end or not.

This is the concept I want to push back on with this thread.

As Niv said earlier:

Joining late is a little different, of course, because that manager didn’t get to bid on other players so they have lost the advantage of bidding on other players, but it doesn’t mean they still do not gain an advantage by trying to add players without any competition.

The point many seem to miss is that most owners are (and should be) operating under the assumption that owners cannot show up late (or skip nominations) and draft.

Just because a player is not nominated earlier does not necessarily mean the other owners value them at $1 or less. Strategies are many but just one might include leaving open spots and money on your roster despite there being players you deem ‘valuable’ still in the FA pool. Open spots give flexibility and the chance to learn more information before committing money or spots.

Many have already realized the benefit of being the last one standing in their draft if there were players remaining they wanted. This is a viable strategy but the cost of being able to implement this strategy is to attend and nominate at each turn.

@chy924 summed this ‘cost’ up well:

When you nominate you have to determine if you’re putting up a player you like and risking getting outbid or if you’re putting up a player you DON’T want and risking getting stuck with that player.

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This is the ultimate thing - if they have preferred players and just don’t want to show that information while other teams with money are out there, they are attempting to manipulate the market, and they should be stopped from succeeding by being marked as done with the draft.

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But if they’re down to one dollar per open spot then they’ve already shown that informtion. They’ve already shown all the other players how much they’re willing to overbid or underbid on players, because they’ve already done that with players they’ve spent more than a dollar on.

And the players know how much they value the rest of the players, because by getting down to one dollar per player they’ve shown they value all the remaining players they would take at one dollar.

The probably prefer some $1 players over others, but unless they have insider information that shouldn’t affect how much the other managers indpendently value the remaining players.

If anything going last with $1 per spot helps the other players as they have less competition for the $1 dollar players.

It also prevents the last player from being able to nominate $1 players and having them go for above value which would be want I would want to do in this situation if I had only $1 spots left.

In my opinion going last hurts any player with only $1 spots.

I don’t think that’s true. Let’s say I have 5 spots and $5 left and other people have cash. If I nominate someone I want, someone else might bid $2 and I lose the player. If I nominate someone I don’t want, I might get stuck with them. So I’m forced to make a decision and take a risk one way or the other.

If I wait, someone on my target list might get nominated but more than likely that’s not going to hurt me - that player might have been nominated anyway and they likely would have been bid to $2 if I nominated them. Then, when I do nominate again, there are fewer (or no) teams with cash and/or roster space, and I’m more likely to get the players I still want without someone else bidding.

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If you nominate a player that you think is worth a dollar and someone pays $2 for them it means that in your opinion they overpaid for that player which is good for you.

My personal opinion is that nominating a player you don’t want is a bad idea in any circumstance.

I’ll nominate players that I think will go for more than I want to spend, but as long as they’re worth at least one dollar I’ll take any player at the right price point.

If I wait, someone on my target list might get nominated but more than likely that’s not going to hurt me

It hurts you because if you think a player is worth one dollar then only the first player who bids can get it at the price you value that player at. Though I would argue the player who is nominating should be trying to get higher priced players for cheap not bidding on $1 players.

Though who’s worth more than a dollar or not depends on how each manager values players.

If you have only $1 left per position, you can only bid $1 even if you think this player could be worth $2. I do not think it is a fair argument to claim that due to only having $1 per roster spot available, anyone you nominate is only worth $1.

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