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Basic Draft Strategy?

FPL Draft format starting in 2017/18
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Mav3rick
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Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Mav3rick »

So for those of us new to the draft version, what are the basics of draft strategy, I guess a lot changes depending on where you are in the draft but should you literally have a list of your top picks and go through them in order, or should you try to do things like pick up premium defenders or the best mid-range options if you don't get first pick on the likes of Kane, Sanchez and Lukaku?

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Terrier Ramone »

I've never done a football draft but I'm a veteran at baseball and american football drafts. The order the game places the players is vital, as non-regular players automatically assume the best players to pick come in order. My suggestion is to look at the whole draft order and look where the bargains are, i.e the value players you want further down the list and in that way you'll need to see what premium players you want earlier. Then, work out what picks you'll be given in each round and ensure you take your picks maybe a round earlier than they will come up on screen.

I also list in order each playing position and rank all the players you'd pick in order: so for GK my list would have De Gea, Courtois, Heaton etc. as each player is picked you cross them off, if you are happy there are still some GKs you'd be happy with left, that might not be a position you need to worry about in that particular round, however, if you decide you have to have one of the GKs listed above and the first 2 are gone, you should select Heaton with your next pick.

For what it's worth, most people think the advantage is to have 1st pick, but I prefer last pick. If the game allows it, I would recommend doing as many practice drafts as you can, just to get the feel of the controls, the order the players come in etc. as you'd be very surprised how much pressure you feel when you have only 45 seconds (or whatever they use) to make a choice.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Mav3rick »

Interesting, see I'd not really considered the aspect of there being players on one list I'd be happy with and therefore ignoring the best keeper to pickup the last best midfielder if that makes sense. Good tip on doing practices, I might even set one up for us to pretend with.

In fact would anyone be interested in messing about with a "practice" draft in the sub forum at some stage?

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Terrier Ramone »

I would

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Blue Fire »

Me too :D

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Cicada »

Mav3rick wrote:In fact would anyone be interested in messing about with a "practice" draft in the sub forum at some stage?
Sure

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by wahine »

Mav3rick wrote:Interesting, see I'd not really considered the aspect of there being players on one list I'd be happy with and therefore ignoring the best keeper to pickup the last best midfielder if that makes sense. Good tip on doing practices, I might even set one up for us to pretend with.
yes a good tip there, so a disadvantage to use the ranking list system and let the computer place your bid rather than take your turn chosing live .

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by gallus »

My advice - make actual list of the players you want, even if you can't draft them all. You can't draft both Kane and Lukaku, but they should be first and second on your list. However, when thr draft starts, you should not stick to the list. Your list is a guide that tells how highly you value certain players. But the draft itself is all about reacting to other players. Notice what kind of players are rising and falling and pick accordingly.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by dino1980 »

I’ve played a draft game with the exact same rules as FPL Draft (points scoring wise) for the past two seasons and haven’t done too bad. Apparently, I had the eighth best score on the entire site last year. Anyway, humble brag over here’s my stream of consciousness on draft strategy.

Size matters:

If you’re playing an eight manager league, then strategy differs from a 12 person and from a 16 person etc.

In an eight-person league (the size suggested by FPL and in the FISO league) the following will be drafted:

16 GKS
40 DEFS
40 MIDS
24 FWDS

So you should 100% be able to get two playing goalkeepers, or even if you don’t then they’ll be some on waivers you can get. Your second GK should almost certainly be your last pick. In a 16 team league (or any 10+ team league) where up to 32 GKs are drafted, you need to be more proactive. Of course picking up a 1st/2nd choice combo from e.g. Newcastle is possible of course.

Likewise, in a 8 team league where 40 defenders are drafted you’ve got 24-28 defenders from the top seven taken (you’d assume) + options like Daniels, Dawson, Fuchs etc it won’t be hard to get a good defence and with ~80 defenders starting every week in FPL then the undrafted/free agents pool will be much wider in defence than elsewhere (as pointed out in the streaming defenders article).

The more players in a league the higher priority you may have to give to premium defenders or at least securing two defenders from top 4/6 teams.

Forward thinking:

Supply and demand. That is all. Ok, that’s not all.

Here are some stats that illustrate how important it is to draft forwards early:

Only 16 forwards played more than half the available minutes last season (1,710 minutes)
Only 17 forwards started 19 games or more
25 strikers played 1350 minutes or more
21 strikers started 15 games or more

Whilst…

20 GKs played more than half the minutes
21 GKs started at least 19 games (Stekelenberg is number 21 here)

Forwards are super important. I’ll use an example from my 14 team draft from last year. I had pick nine. When it got to me Hazard was still available, but I didn’t hesitate in picking Lukaku (Costa was also available). Hazard went next. When it got back me to for pick two I took Eriksen. In round three I took Benteke. The drop off between Lukaku and Benteke (60 points as it turned out) was far greater than Hazard and Eriksen (three points as it turned out) making Lukaku the easy choice, even though Hazard could reasonably be expected to score more points than Lukaku (Hazard did by 3 points). Likewise, there were better mids available than Benteke but getting that second forward who is a) nailed b) not that injury prone is really important.

Taking two in the first three rounds in advised. If you find yourself unable to get three decent forwards, or even two, then planning to play 3-5-2, 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 5-4-1 etc is something you’ll need to plan on the fly.


Sheeeeeeeit:

Get a spreadsheet and get ranking. Two main areas here. In one column just rank your top 25 or so picks, straight up. Then in the next few break it down into strikers, mids etc. Lastly, rank all 20 teams (not players) by how important you think it is to have someone from that team in a mid/forward role and in a defensive slot. This is more useful for defence, but it’ll really help when you have a tough decision and are on a 60 second shot clock.

This helps with the marginal calls IMO. Looking for that fourth/fifth mid and got no X cover Maybe take a punt on e.g. Sane (last year obv) or Ayew etc instead of playing it safe.

Likewise if FPL Draft has the ability for you to make yourself a list of your draft picks in order. I’d recommend doing it my position. Strikers first, mids next etc. So Kane, Lukaku, Aguero etc. This helps when you know you want to draft a mid in round four and so you can scroll to that part of your list and pick whoever you want.

Premiums are at a premium in defence but the belly is big:


This is a follow on from the above but there might come a time when you have to make a decision between drafting the fourth best Man Utd defender e.g. Blind/Shaw and the best Stoke defender e.g. Shawcross. I would suggest taking the former every time.

There is always the chance that the fourth best United defender may become their best come season end, but the best Stoke defender has a much lower ceiling. There will be so many options from mid table sides left in the free agency pool that you can definitely take a punt on your fourth/fifth defenders should you want to.

Draft day is important but not the be all and end all:

I’ve seen a lot of talk on here about how important the draft is in determining the outcome of the league. Yeah, it helps to be around, but for instance, the guy who came third in our 14 team league last season had auto pick on for his draft as he couldn’t make it.

They’ll be plenty of moves to be made during the season and whilst no one is going to be giving up Aguero if he gets injured, they’ll be plenty of players who come to the fore who aren’t even drafted. E.g. Josh King last season. There were a ton of transfers in my 14 team league last year, with eight they'll be plenty.

Injuries matter more:

Obvious I know, but as alluded to above, you can’t just replace Kun if he gets injured for six weeks. Well, you can but you probably won’t get him back. So, consider injury records when drafting.

Pay attention:

Not sure if you should draft a mid of def next? Take a look at the teams to draft after you/before it gets back to you. They might have drafted all their mids and so won’t be taking any. That can make the difference between having to take a mid because you don’t think he’ll be available when it gets back to you, or drafting a defender because you think that mid will be available.

Mock drafts:

I’ve noticed that some members would like to run mock drafts to get used to them. Over at Draft Fantasy Football you can already set up leagues etc and that could be a good place for members to get acquainted with how a draft works.

For anyone who wants to, I’ve set up an eight person league with the draft due to take place at 8.30pm on Wednesday night over on that site. It's called Fiso Draft 1. If anyone wants to join please PM me for the code.

Fwiw they seem to have some cool options like ‘The Kante Rule’ block/tackles/interceptions are worth points etc.

Anyway that's all I can think of for now. Happy draft day all.

Disclaimer: this is all just my opinion, there are many ways to play the game!
Last edited by dino1980 on 18 Jul 2017, 01:01, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by DAREEL »

Thanks Dino. Enjoyed that read and I'll be taking some notes so I can remember. Going to create a list like you say. Top man

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by wahine »

Thanks Dino

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Zimmerman »

Useful to see it all written down (thanks for taking the time to do so).

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by mad dog »

Great that Dino. Excellent write up

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Zimmerman »

There goes my plan of stealing a march on my fellow FPL amateurs

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by MoSe »

I saw many posters asking how long a draft could take, in other threads of this forum

I jotted down some considerations, and moved them here as it's maybe a more general topic :)
__________________________________________
I was wondering...:
  • does the Draft algorithm/process check the online status of the players,
    so that if you're not online/connected to the draft room, it picks according to your wishlist after 0 seconds,
  • or does it wait for an input from you in any case, so if you have set say 60 seconds per pick,
    it doesn't check your status, or at least gives you the chance to reestablish the connection in time,
    and only picks on your behalf after the 60 seconds expire?
it would make a lot of difference...

say 4 players can't attend the draft, that's 60 picks
if the system waits the whole time each pick, that's 1 hour spent in useless waiting, in case you set 1 minute per pick

I hope it's the former method, checking if a player is online and immediately automate his/her pick if he/she's not

if the draft goes according to your plan/expectations, you might have your next call ready and pass the ball on in 5 seconds
if something unexpected happens, you'd need to check the alternatives and/or the openings left, browse your list, assess and decide, it easily takes 30-45 seconds...
being forced to curtail that time because of some time mismanagement by the process would be disappointing...

anyway:

8 teams have to make 15*8 = 120 picks

if you set 60 seconds each, the draft will take *at most* 2 hours (in case all players always take the whole 60 seconds for every call, which is very unlikely)
assuming a more realistic average pick time of 30 seconds instead, inside the allowed minute (e.g. sometimes 10" sometimes 50") it would take 1 hour

if you set 30 seconds, it will take at most 1 hr, but while the quick calls will stay quick, the long ones will have to be hasted, sometimes you'll use 10" but the most of the times you'll use all 30" and you'll have a general feeling of having to haste a crucial decision, so it would still take 45-50' but leave more players unsatisfied

that is just my guess of course, and assuming you have the option to set different speeds

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Zimmerman »

You really think people will make a decision in less than 60seconds?

I think after about the first 7 picks every pick will be pondered for the maximum time.
I'm only hoping we use the online system thus enforcing a 60 second max... otherwise it's gonna take about 4hrs

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by wahine »

:roll:

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by MoSe »

Zimmerman wrote:You really think people will make a decision in less than 60seconds?

I think after about the first 7 picks every pick will be pondered for the maximum time.
(*) I'm only hoping we use the online system thus enforcing a 60 second max... otherwise it's gonna take about 4hrs
I did a draft on Fantrax 2 seasons ago with some fisoers, I asked to set 90" as I had a very old smurfone then, and I can't recall being pressed for times, most of the time IIRC I took less than a minute, including a 10-15" delay due to the slow connection

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=116682

judging from the posts timestamps, it took barely more than 2 hours for 10 teams
- can't recall how many attended it live tho... for sure a couple must had been absent
Prior than that, my only other experience of an online draft dates back to 2001 for Serie A,
and it actually was purely automated, that is all team picks were processed and determined by Watchlists only, as a requirement

(*) do you think FPL would also offer the chance to run a league draft offline, and then upload the reuslts???? :o :?
I'd be surprised...

https://www.premierleague.com/news/427772?sf96151543
Q: When will the draft take place?
The Scout: The administrator of a private league can decide the date and time of the draft.
This must be completed before the Gameweek 1 deadline at 6.45pm on 11 August, 2017.
it's true, it's not explicitly stated that it has to be online...

indeed tho.... :idea: you can handle it earlier with a topic in this forum (for instance)...
and let then all players enter a Watchlist each with just their XV outcome from the offline topic, and launch it with the shortest delay...

hadn't though of that

why would you choose such system tho? you'd have to be online here, couldn't be handling an automated wathclist in the topic, nor enforce a response time (well, you could have a "draft manager" posting "skip" say 5 minutes after previous post timestamp... and that player will have to use the skipped pick at the end of it all... :? )

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by bigcliff2 »

Jus bumping this part from dino's post above:

"For anyone who wants to, I’ve set up an eight person league with the draft due to take place at 8.30pm on Wednesday night over on that site. It's called Fiso Draft 1. If anyone wants to join please PM me for the code."

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by Stemania »

Fantastic post dino.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by dino1980 »

bigcliff2 wrote:Jus bumping this part from dino's post above:

"For anyone who wants to, I’ve set up an eight person league with the draft due to take place at 8.30pm on Wednesday night over on that site. It's called Fiso Draft 1. If anyone wants to join please PM me for the code."
Cheers, still three spots left in this. Just to clarify It starts at 8.30pm UK time.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by OIEIAO »

MoSe wrote: why would you choose such system tho? you'd have to be online here, couldn't be handling an automated wathclist in the topic, nor enforce a response time (well, you could have a "draft manager" posting "skip" say 5 minutes after previous post timestamp... and that player will have to use the skipped pick at the end of it all... :? )
My friends and I will do our draft by all sitting in a room with some food and drink. We've done this for the last few years for our unofficial drafts.
If we have to key in picks as we go we will save the need to record the picks in any other way. But,

We will need enough laptops / devices to be able to upload the picks quickly. Unless the mobile site is lovely and clear I am imagining 10 people needing 3 or 4 laptops with different browsers, to save endless logging in and out. The time involved in getting this many people comfortable with taking control and picking within a short time limit will itself be time consuming.
We will also be constrained by a system time limit that we would be happy to enforce informally.

I hope there's an option to key it in afterwards. Or, for the admin to do it live, but on behalf of everybody.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by dino1980 »

If you want to do an offline draft and then upload it then it's possible. All you'd have to do is pick the players in person as you describe above and then get the league chairman to set up a time for the online draft e.g. 8pm Thursday. All the players in the league then log in before this and set their autopick lists to the 15 players they've picked in the in person draft and bob's your uncle.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by bspittles »

dino1980 wrote:If you want to do an offline draft and then upload it then it's possible. All you'd have to do is pick the players in person as you describe above and then get the league chairman to set up a time for the online draft e.g. 8pm Thursday. All the players in the league then log in before this and set their autopick lists to the 15 players they've picked in the in person draft and bob's your uncle.
That would depend on when FPL decide on the draft order. At the time the league is complete, or at the start of the draft?

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by dino1980 »

That wouldn't affect things. All that matters is the draft order in person if a group of mates are doing a 'in the room' type draft. It doesn't matter what order the FPL draft puts them in as if you only upload 15 autopicks to your team you'll get those players no matter if you pick first or last.

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by gallus »

dino1980 wrote:If you want to do an offline draft and then upload it then it's possible. All you'd have to do is pick the players in person as you describe above and then get the league chairman to set up a time for the online draft e.g. 8pm Thursday. All the players in the league then log in before this and set their autopick lists to the 15 players they've picked in the in person draft and bob's your uncle.
that's a great idea. I wanted to organize a draft night with a few friends as well, but we don't have 5 laptops! :lol:

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by MoSe »

as posted earlier...
MoSe wrote:and let then all players enter a Watchlist each with just their XV outcome from the offline topic, and launch it with the shortest delay...

hadn't though of that

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by MoSe »

OIEIAO wrote:My friends and I will do our draft by all sitting in a room with some food and drink. We've done this for the last few years for our unofficial drafts
I did that in 91 and 92 for our Serie A pen-and-paper FF.
It's sure great fun if you're a local group of friends, wanting to spend the whole evening together, and maybe part of the afternoon too.

But the posts here were mostly concerned the draft shouldn't take too long...
And who'd pay ctibbits and wahine overseas tickets to come attend the draft in england? ;)
(I could maybe manage from the mediterranean with easyjet, and it's over a decade since I last enjoyed a hand-pumped bitter in a london pub...)

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by wahine »

Hmm may have to round up some Kiwis that actually still live here in NZ to do a draft in our own time, way back I started off playing against a friend originally from the UK who was an extreme Arsenal fan and he gave up playing FPL against me after getting so far behind and decided not to play again the following season, the Kiwis I know are keen on EPL all support Liverpool and/or Westham theyre okay with getting up at 4am on sunday morning to watch but not interested in FPL - dont know what they are missing eh?

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Re: Basic Draft Strategy?

Post by wahine »

"The Scout: Before the draft, each manager can create a Watchlist of players,
listed in priority order, representing their top targets for each position.
If you are absent for the duration or for any part of the draft, the Watchlist
is used to automatically make selections on your behalf.
If no Watchlist is selected, draft ranks are used to prioritise automatic
selections.
Each player in the game is given a draft rank based on their FPL points total
last season and/or their potential for points in 2017/18."

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