Fantasy Draft is the recruiting process in fantasy sports. Generally, when they say “Fantasy Draft,” they mean the draft in a season-long fantasy sport.
The most popular type of fantasy draft is the snake draft with a limited pool of players.
People sometimes mistakenly refer to fantasy drafts as fantasy sports themselves, but these are different things.
What does Fantasy Draft mean?
Fantasy Draft is a term used exclusively in fantasy sports. However, the very procedure of the Draft itself has its roots in American sports.
The “Draft” itself is a procedure particularly common in American leagues (NHL, NBA, NFL, etc.) that involves teams recruiting players who do not have a current contract with any team in the league. The most common type of draft is the so-called “Rookies Draft”, in which newly-arrived players are allocated to all teams in the league. As a rule, the weakest teams are picked first and the strongest teams last. This keeps the balance of power in the league.
The word “Fantasy” makes it clear that this is not just a draft, but a fantasy draft, a fantasy draft, something that can never happen in real life. Because it never happens in real life for teams to draft rosters from scratch, picking from all the current players in the league. However, that’s exactly what happens in the Fantasy Draft.
Varieties of Fantasy Drafts
There are two main varieties of fantasy drafts – Draft Snake and Draft Auction.
What is a Snake Draft?
Snake Draft is divided into rounds – one round for each available spot on teams’ rosters. For example, if each team is supposed to have 15 players, the number of draft picks in each round equals the number of participants – each fantasy manager makes one pick in each round.
In a snake draft, participants make their picks in the first round in a preset, usually random, order. When the first round is over, the team that picked last in the first round picks first in the second round-in other words, the draft starts in reverse order. The team that picked first in the first round now picks last in the second round and first in the third round. Thus, the order changes back and forth each round, resembling the movement of a snake.
Snake drafting is very often used in seasonal fantasy sports, fantasy soccer and fantasy basketball, because it allows you to make the draft procedure fair and balanced. Agree, it wouldn’t be fair if the team with the first overall pick was the first pick in each round!
What is an “Auction Draft”?
A fantasy draft auction is very similar in nature to an eBay auction, with the only exception being that the items up for bid are real athletes (NFL players, NBA basketball players, or even poker players at the WSOP) rather than gadgets or antiques. In a fantasy draft auction, each athlete has a different starting price and each participant has a limited budget. The challenge for participating teams is to completely fill the roster without exceeding the starting budget.
You can offer any desired price per player. Most importantly, you must have enough budget left to fill all the other roster spots.
For example, if teams in your league are to consist of 20 players and your budget is 200, the maximum price you can offer for your first player is 181. Because you must have at least 1 unit left for each of the other 19 slots in your roster. However it is not recommended to do so, because it will put your fantasy team in a very bad spot!
Where else does Fantasy Drafting apply?
The concept of fantasy sports has become so popular these days that it is being used by the world famous brands with great success:
WWE Fantasy Draft
World Wrestling Entertainment, the official site of the World Wrestling Association, hosts its own fantasy tournament. Participants can recruit teams of current wrestlers and compete against other fans of the series.
WSOP Fantasy Draft
Before every World Series of Poker event, world-renowned professionals including Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier and Sergey Rybachenko host their own WSOP Fantasy Draft called the 25kFantasy. The teams and rules can be viewed at the website of the same name. There you can also see the results of the 2017, 2016 and previous years’ FantasyDraft WSOPs. As you can guess from the tournament name, the entry fee is $25,000.
Fantasy Draft NBA 2k17, 2k16
Fantasy Draft is also available in the NBA 2k17 game. When you start a new game, you can select Fantasy Draft mode and draft a roster just like in fantasy basketball!
Fantasy Draft Hockey
The official site of the NHL also holds its own fantasy tournaments, the main element of which is a hockey fantasy draft.
Fantasy Draft Football Manager
Fantasy Draft mode has made its way to Football Manager. It serves as an addition to the main part of the game, and its main feature is the ability to play against artificial intelligence. In fact, in one evening you can go through the whole process from Fantasy Draft to determining the winner.
Shape in daily fantasy soccer
Today’s article will focus on the uniforms of players and teams. It does not mean equipment, but physical fitness. Uniforms are one of the most significant factors in every sport, and soccer is no exception.
By studying the form of teams and players, participants of the tournaments on daily fantasy soccer are able to choose those players, on which clubs’ coaches will bet. And that, in turn, has a huge impact on the potential number of fantasy points a DFS player can earn.
Team Form
How a team looks from round to round over the course of a championship is probably the most important factor that affects a player’s form.
Winning streak
If a team has a winning streak and plays with confidence, this is passed on to every player on the club, and can help boost the performance of those who initially seem unremarkable. Such a team will play with more freedom, which means more attacks and scoring chances that result in more fantasy points. And this is especially important when participating in fantasy leagues with a large tournament field.
However, form is much more than just information about wins and losses.
Goals
Goals are the highest-scoring events that earn the most fantasy points in fantasy soccer, and you should pay even more attention to them than the outcome of the game. When faced with a choice between a team, which loses every week and a team, which ends up going 3-4, you better take players from the latter. Keeping that in mind will help you pick cheap and useful players from losing teams.
Derby
There’s another factor that affects it, and that’s the derby. The old cliché is that uniforms don’t matter during derbies when opponents from the same city or similar geographic area meet. However, there are DFS players who are equally adept at figuring out matches where player passion is a key factor, and solving such puzzles puts them far ahead in team recruiting.
Player Form
If you’re used to playing seasonal fantasy, it’s nothing new for you to keep track of the peaks and drops in player form, but you have a lot more work to do with it in daily fantasy, because there are a lot more opportunities to get rid of players you’re not happy with.
Attack
Offensive players only affect the game when they touch the sword, and the number of times they touch the ball near the opponent’s goal mainly depends on their form. When a player is in bad shape, his teammates are less likely to trust him with the ball and therefore his offensive potential fades.
At the same time, teammates may sometimes go the other way: they will pass to such a player over and over again in the vain hope of “banishing” his bad form. Even so, the squad should be built around a player who is in good form. For instance, periods of good form in forwards usually last a long time and you can use that for your team.
Goalkeepers
Goaltenders are by no means immune to bad form and mistakes, and when that happens, it is very difficult to get points. There are a few key statistics to look at when evaluating goalie form: saves per game and goals conceded. And while it is still useful to check the probable wedges, a good number of saves often results in more points.
To put it in perspective: With a scoring average of two saves, a goalie needs only three saves to surpass the save percentage, and the goalie can receive team points for winning the game.
As for gross saves, you need to know more about them, and you should be a championship expert to know more about each case.
Defense
Defenders are another group whose form is primarily affected by mistakes, because every mistake can lead to a missed goal. More often than not, defenders who are in bad shape remain on the bench or do not play the entire game, so selecting these players is not the best option.
Conclusion
Being a Daily Fantasy Football player means knowing all aspects of this beautiful game. Learning the dark and light streaks of teams and players is just another part of the strategy you need to use to decide which players you will take to your lineup this week.