Yahoo auction draft settings

[tms298]

Has anyone experimented with reducing the bid time limit? The default settings indicate that my auction (12 teams) will take 3 hours and 18 minutes! If I reduce the bid time from 30 seconds to 20 seconds it will reduce the time by 30 minutes and if I cut it to 10 seconds it will shave another half hour. Does anyone have experience with a bid time of 30, 20, or 10 seconds?

[Fantasy Sports Genie]

Has anyone experimented with reducing the bid time limit? The default settings indicate that my auction (12 teams) will take 3 hours and 18 minutes! If I reduce the bid time from 30 seconds to 20 seconds it will reduce the time by 30 minutes and if I cut it to 10 seconds it will shave another half hour. Does anyone have experience with a bid time of 30, 20, or 10 seconds?

I can mostly just say that the time estimate is really just that and can vary a lot in either direction. If you have a bid time limit of 30 seconds, and someone bids with 1 second left, it doesn't reset the clock to 30 in any case; it resets it to 10, if memory serves. So if your auction's time is dominated by people going back and forth, then changing that initial clock from 30 to 10 seconds (for example) won't make as much difference. If it tends to be 1 or 2 bids and out, it could make a big difference. Really depends how active the bidding is, and how many people are actively participating.

There is another fix I made that will go out soon and will potentially help at least a bit. The draft server understands the notion of a trump bid; if you bid enough that nobody in the draft can possibly outbid you, then there is no clock. The player is immediately sold to you. But it doesn't currently understand the idea of a trump nomination. This can be particularly relevant when you get to the dregs of your draft, and everyone is just drafting players for $1 with the money they have left. As is, each person will nominate for $1, and it will wait for 30 seconds before selling to them. After my fix, as soon as they bid the $1 it should realize that nobody can possibly outbid them, and not count down the 30 seconds. But even one other team with extra funds (i.e. $5 with 4 open spots) will cause the clock to engage, to see if this is the player where that guy will bid $2. Make sense?

Hope that helps...

[tms298]

Thanks, Genie--that helps a lot. I think we will try 20 seconds.

[tms298]

We did our auction with the reduced bid time of 20 seconds and I would say it worked perfectly. The draft still took about 2 hours and 40 minutes (12 teams) but I would say that in no way did the reduction of bid time compromise the quality of the draft. This change saved about 30 minutes.