A snake draft or standard draft. Which is better?

[jstoller]

I am the commish of a second year keeper league in which we are keeping 6 of our 24 rounds.

A few of the people seem to like the idea that we go away from a snake draft and go to a standard draft where the first pick also picks 11th(10 teams).

They claim getting the 10th and 11th overall picks as the champion is more of an advantage that the person who gets the 1st and 20th picks in a snake draft.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Is there any data to support which is better year over year.

I am 100% for a snake draft since we only keep 6 of the 24. I feel like there is no reason the people who were poor last year can't turn it around this year. They arent keeping half of their team or anything so they have the same chances as anybody else in the league does to have a good year. I think having somebody get the 1st and 11th pick is so much of an advantage simply because they were poor last year is ridiculous.

Please give me any help/thoughts on this to either make me feel I am right or turn me around.

Thanks

[invisiblemagic]

I'm a fan of the snake draft. If it was a two-round draft, yes some of your league-mates might have a point. Considering the first 4 rounds...would you rather have 1/20/21/40 or 10/11/30/31 . It starts becoming a tougher call at that point which one is better.

To not do a snake system would really put the 10th slotted team in a great disadvantage.

What I would recommend is to keep the snake draft...but instead of automatically designating the draft spots for each team, you should allow them to choose their draft spot in order of last year's reverse standings...So last year's last place team would have first crack at choosing 1st or 10th or 5th or whatever they want...then the 2nd team would choose...so on so forth...then the first place team gets stuck with whatever is deemed the "worst" spot.

Personally, I enjoy a middle of the round pick more than first or last.

[Matthias]

In a keeper league, I would do 2 or 4 rounds of regular draft and then snake afterwards. The reason to do a snake is to make the people at the end even with the people in the beginning but in a keeper league you try to use the draft to help out a little bit the teams that didn't do so well last year. And even if you're only keeping 6, without looking at the rosters, I would rather have the keepers of the teams that finished in the top 3 than the bottom 3.

[bigmck]

Between the standard and snake, snake is more fair. == Saying that, we don't use either one. A guy in our league has a Masters Degree in math. He did somekind of study on it and came up with a different order. Supposedly this gives everyone a better chance since everyone picks first at some time. It goes like this. Round One and Two are the regular snake method.

Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6
2 Reverse 3 Reverse
3 of 3 4 of 5
4 5
5 6
6 7
7 8
8 9
9 10
10 1
1 2

As you can see In the Odd Number Rounds the top pick in the Previous Odd Round drops to the bottom. The Even Rounds are the reverse of the previous Odd Round. It works pretty good.

[dmendro]

Auction draft is better! With that being said, I like snakes more.

[Matthias]

I think you guys are answering a question not asked.

In a redraft league, either a snake or a modified snake like bigmck proposes is more fair and thus better.

In a keeper league, however, you might want to give a little advantage to the teams that didn't do well. And so you should either do a total non-snake or start with a non-snake that becomes a snake draft after X number of rounds.

None of the professional leagues have a snake draft. There's a reason.

[fast dogs]

we do 4 rounds of worst to 1st then the winner starts the regular snake in the 5th; it works very well handicapping the top teams a little bit and giving the lesser teams a little more reason to come back.

[converge241]

For keeper drafts after the initial year should always be straight draft with champ picking last

League I run is keep 5 out of 25 (we have a little lottery for the bottom teams so you cant guarantee 1st pick) and it is a straight draft every time even though we "only" keep 5. Only the initial years draft should be snake (or non-keeper leagues).

If you have your heart set on keeping some type of snaking involved at least do 3RR Third Round Reversal

1st round - 1-10
2nd round 1-10
3rd round 10-1
4th round 1-10
5th round 10-1
6th round 1-10
etc etc

CBS default drafts have a constantly changing order that looks interesting as well where every team gets to pick 1st in a round at least once. They have a grid of it posted in their rules. You might have to modify it slightly for keeper but check that out too!

[Tief]

I know the reason people run a draft is because they hate how much time auctions take, but we use a mixed auction/draft. We select 30 of the best (ideally, the 30 best) players to be auctioned off. Each team gets 100 "points" to spend in the auction. Then you essentially buy your draft position - in a standard draft - with your unused points. Whoever has most points left drafts first, second most drafts second an so on.

We don't have a keeper league, but I'm sure this system would work equally well with one. It's incredibly fair, and if there's a player that you absolutely have your heart set on, there's a way to get him - unlike in either a snake or standard draft.

It's never happened for us, but if the bidding reaches 100 points on any player, you can up the bid by throwing in a draft pick (that you surrender). You then just bid progressively lower round picks.