If you haven’t yet experienced the thrill of an auction draft, you don’t know what you are missing. First and foremost, the allure of the auction draft is that it allows you to construct a team of the players you want without being a slave to the lottery of your typical draft. Ever end up with the seventh pick in your league and know you don’t have a shot at Adrian Peterson? That’s what I’m talking about – auction drafts allow you to go after the players you want, the only caveat being the amount you are willing to pay for that player.

If you are new to auction style, or even if you have played in them before, it’s a must to prepare beforehand and that’s what this article is all about. Unlike typical drafts, you can’t just show up to your auction draft with a list purchased from the magazine stand an hour beforehand and expect to do well. Preparation is the key. The better prepared you are, the better chance you have to win, it’s really that simple. In the following article I am going to review how to prepare your cheat sheet and go over some strategies to employ during your draft. If you want to dominate your opponents, keep reading.

Preparing A Cheat Sheet

The first thing you’ll need to do is construct a list of player rankings using the outline below. There is some math involved, but don’t let it scare you off. The simple fact is that any auction ranking you find is only as good as the context to which is was written – the salary cap, number of starters, roster size and number of teams all make a difference when figuring out the relative value of players specific to your league. If you take the time to create this list, I guarantee you’ll have a huge advantage at your draft.

For each step below, I’ve explained what you need to calculate, what it tells you and provide an example calculation. When you are done with the last step, you’ll have a complete cheat-sheet ready to go to your draft with! You’ll want to use a computer program (like Microsoft Excel) to help with the calculations.

1. Multiply the total cap dollars by the number of teams in the league.

This is a very important calculation because it tells you the total number of dollars available to be spent by league members on all available players.

Example: Our league has 12 teams and a $300 cap, therefore the total cap dollars are $3600

2. Multiply the total number of roster spots by the number of teams.

This number tells you exactly how many players you need to rank overall, no more and no less. At this step, we are not concerned with individual positions, just total roster size.

Example: Our 12 team league has 20 roster spots, therefore we need to rank 240 players

3. Multiply the number of starters at each position by the number of teams.

This step will further refine our cheat sheet by telling us how many players we need to rank at each position. It doesn’t have to be exact since we really only need to make sure we rank more players at each position than we need, including backups. When we are done, all of these totaled together should equal our total from step 2.

Example: Our league uses the following lineup: QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, Flex (RB/WR/TE), K,DST, for a total of 9 starting spots out of the 20 total roster spots. Figure the remaining 11 spots will be a majority of RBs and WRs, therefore we’ll rank:

36 QBs (1 starter + 2 backups = 3 x 12 teams)

60 RBs (2 starters + 3 backups = 5 x 12 teams)

72 WRs (2 starters + 4 backups= 6 x 12 teams)

24 TEs (1 starter +1 backup = 2 x 12 teams)

24 Ks (1 starter + 1 backup = 2 x 12 teams)

24 DSTs (1 starter + 1 backup = 2 x 12 teams)

Total = 240 players (same as step 2)

4. Rank your players.

This step is easy. Go ahead…. … [ ]

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