He Hate Me FF keeper league

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
141

I forgot to comment on this. I completely agree with you here, which is why I separated out the keepers by position and alphabetized them. Hopefully, it won’t too unwieldy to check before every single pick, (especially as names get crossed off,) but we won’t know until we try it once.

Managers who have traded picks who don’t show up for the live draft is the nightmare scenario. I don’t even want to think about it. If I were forced to think about it, if an owner with traded picks doesn’t show up by the time Munch gets on the clock with the first overall pick, my vote is to void ALL trades.

Right now, I’m on the fence about the auto-notifications. I like how they work, but I’m wondering if I shouldn’t do it after every pick, if just to say something like:

*** VarlosZ picks for himself.

There’s no typing involved for me; as I said, it’s autostuffed to the clipboard, so it’s juts a matter of clicking the chat window and pasting. And with the live draft screen, I really do think I’ll be able to log each pick and post a notification within 5 seconds after each selection. Granted, I may not be able to blink very much, but blinking is overrated anyway.

142

I’m about 50/50 to make the whole live draft at this point. I will exclude all the keepers, including my own; and I’ve been in no trades of draft picks.
So I think the worst thing that happens is that whoever wants the players I draft in rounds 6 and 14 just draft Delhomme and Rivers and then Ellis Dee can swap them out.

I think I agree with Varlos… this has a chance to go massively wrong. Don’t get me wrong - huge kudos to the commish for all the work he’s done - but I can’t imagine what would happen if (for example) Omniscient gets disconnected for a couple of rounds.

143

And I voted against draft pick trading!

144

We said from teh very beginning that trades could be executed only if both parties were present at the live draft. I hope that all the owners who made trades have taken that guidance responsibly (and I have no reason to think otherwise.) It would be a nightmare right now to void trades as well, since some owners have built their keeper strategies around traded picks/players.

Ellis – does the Yahoo draft allow you to roll back picks if necessary (or even just freeze the clock)? If things get confused that might be the way to go.

Wilson – If you do not put your own keepers on the ignore list, and everyone else has, then you will be assured of drafting them. If you rank your picks properly, you will even take them in the right keeper rounds. But I shudder at teh idea of trying to predict what precise value for Rivers will convince the Yahoo autodraft to take him in exactly the 14th round. And if you take him in the wrong round, especially if you take him early, then I can’t think of any solution other than “Wilso overpaid fro his keeper picks”.

145

Fair point, and no, I’d bet a zillion dollars that yahoo supports neither rollbacks nor freezing. I can’t say for sure, though, since I’ve never commished a league before.

As far as Wilson’s keepers, I’ll leave it up to his discretion however he wants to handle it. His idea is certainly workable and acceptable to me. And Wilson, since you’re keeping two QBs, you might want to exclude all QBs to make sure you don’t get any others in the autodraft. (Unless you want to carry 3 or 4, or more!) Here’ my recommendation:

Exclude all QBs but Delhomme. He’s ranked #72 overall, and you’re keeping him with the 73rd pick. That’s pretty friggin’ close. Let him get autodrafted for you as he comes. As for Rivers, it’s the 14th round. Just exclude him and we’ll deal with swapping out whatever scrub gets picked post-draft. If somebody really wants the scrub, they can draft Rivers for the swap. This would minimize headaches all around, since we wouldn’t have to remember that your 6.3 pick is still available.

As far as trading in general goes, I share the trepidation expressed by VarlosZ, Jimmy and Wilson. But I found the past month of trading to be quite fun, and would consider it a shame if it turns out to be unworkable during the live draft.

But in light of the concerns expressed, I say we stop all trading now, and go into the draft with what we’ve got. If you have special circumstances why you need to still do a trade, email me your reasoning.

And I trust that everyone who’s made trades understands that they need to write down their guys on the worksheet, since their roster as listed by yahoo won’t be accurate.

146

Just so we’re clear, because someone told me otherwise the other day – there is now a freeze on trades until Monday, right? Or can we still make deals?

147

Yep, but it’s til Tuesday. The concerns are legitimate, so let’s see if this whole trading idea works before loading it up any further.

If somebody was in mid negotiation, or has already made a deal under the assumption they could still make some more moves, email me your reasoning and ask for an exception.

148

There is not, in fact, a way for any of us to alter or suspend the course of the live draft.

Question about this – does that mean that my rankings list will not exclude excluded players? I assume that at least that list of players that I have pre-ranked will be free of the players whom I’ve moved to the exclude list, right? So if somebody, lets call him “me,” regularly pre-ranks 200+ guys for the hell of it, that person would be OK to draft from his personal list as long as he still had guys left in it? I’m assuming this is the case, but I was one of the ones who missed the draft last year, so I’ve never actually seen the exclude list at work during a live draft. Actually, I’ve never seen the exclude list work, period, but that’s a different story.

149

It sure would be nice if the player list were based on our personal rankings and excludes; then we wouldn’t have to physically refer to the printed keeper list before every pick. But it doesn’t. As long as you’re online and in the draft, as far as can tell/remember, there is no way at all to access your prerankings from inside the live draft.

One thing just occurred to me about traded picks. In a normal league with no trades, we all agree to accept the risk of autodrafted players, whether a lightning storm knocks out our power, we get disconnected due to “inactivity”, or our computer crashes. We get back online, talk smack about how the yahoo picks suck, and move on with those players as now part of our team.

By that same logic, when we trade picks, we agree to a little extra risk. Only instead of it being us that might get booted from the draft, it’s the guy we traded with we have to worry about.

So back to Wilson’s evil, mean-spirited hypothetical, (hehheh,) let’s say Omni gets dropped for two rounds. During those two rounds, yahoo will autodraft for him. If you happen to own one of those picks from a trade, well, you get the autodrafted guy. Similarly, if he owns one of your picks through trade, and he’s still offline, then clear your “on-deck” list and let the time run out so that yahoo autodrafts that pick for him.

Make sense? In a nutshell, trading picks with somebody carries with it an agreement to accept the risk of him not being there. The only difference between this league and a vanilla one is that in the latter, you only carry your own risk.

So even if Omni or Mundi – both with loads of trades – fail to show up, their trades are still in effect. The guys they traded with will be bummed, but will still get the picks they acquired; rationalize it as you got disconnected for the turns when the offline guy is on the clock.

This makes me feel better, despite the fact that my trades pose the biggest risk, since no way will the computer draft the guys I would want. This also means that you should consider your prerankings in a different light, since they also in effect are rankings for the teams you traded with. If you’ve made several trades, your safest option is to have no prerankings at all; only excluded players.

150

Oh yeah, I’ve also done a complete dry-run test of my utility’s live draft screen by creating a league file for our 2004 HHM draft and entering in the whole thing. No drafting problems at all to report; worked like a charm. I’ll do one for last year’s league as a final simulated test, and then create a file for furt’s league and see if I can keep up with things in realtime during his live draft this weekend. I’ll post here any insight I gain from that experience.

151

I’ve got a alternative which would be disappointing, but which is probably important to propose. Should the draft come apart at the seams with several people absent or with Yahoo fritzing out and dropping people like flies we all agree to vote to do a redraft via email before the opening game. One or two snafus won’t warrant a redraft but if the issues become paramount we can vote to abandon the miscarriage and just do a quick draft by email over the subsequent day, shouldn’t be too hard.

Thoughts?

152

I think we should wait and see. If it goes to shit, we’ll (almost) all be together in a chat room. No better time to hash it out than then, IMO.

153

How much before the draft starts will the room be open, because we could all agree to try and get there early and hash anything out if we need to.

Oh, yeah, and I’m still kicking all your asses. And your donkeys too.

154

I think the draft room is usually available 15 minutes before draft time.

In the vent of a disaster, email will take far too long to run a 16 round draft for 14 owners. I suggest we use xpertsorts instead. It allows for a fairly well customized draft, with commissioner control to force picks or roll back as required. We can set teh draft up in advance, and have all teams join before Mondaym then we don’t need to worry about an AWOL owner preventing teh draft from starting. You can also predraft specific picks by round, which would help with keepers.

155

No, there’s definitely a dropdown during the draft that flips from Y! Rankings to My Rankings. My question is, why wouldn’t “My Rankings” obey the exclude list? I’m fairly sure there’s no reason they wouldn’t.

156

There’s a chance I won’t make it. My big money league ($100 x 12 people) is at the same time, and it’s our seventh year, can’t miss it. Commish is out of town and I can’t get in touch with him, so I have no idea if he has wireless access or if I will have an opportunity to sit at the PC for an extended period of time. Thing is, it’s in the city, which has free wirless access, but I’m not sure if it extends to his area (I’m actually out in the NOLA suburbs and haven’t tried it yet).

Regardless, with this one being held late, worst case scenario has a friend draft in my early rounds for me, then I’ll take over when I get return.

157

I stand corrected; my apologies. On the yahoo board, Munch confirmed that the “My Picks” dropdown does handle excluded players properly. The only drawback is that you if you only rank a few dozen guys, the list winds up empty after the first couple rounds. With a top 200, you should be good to go.

I set up our league on that site. Everyone should check for emails from them. Those of you who already have accounts there have been notified of the league. Those that don’t have been sent passwords to activate your new account. I assume they will then let you know about the league.

Setting up the league was painful. The blizzard of settings I had to set was bad enough, but the SQL engine kept throwing exceptions at the apostrophes in team names, and then making me reenter all the emails, usernames and team names. Crux of the biscuit indeed.

I really really really do NOT want to have to resort to drafting there. Setting up the league itself was bad enough; the thought of manually entering 224 roster corrections in the yahoo league is…unpleasant. But if we are forced into it, it’s a million times better than an email draft.

Not a problem at all. Just make sure your friend knows that your name is Bababooey and/or NOLA, and also that he knows to check the keeper list before each pick.

158

I really really really do not want us to have to go there, either, but in the disaster scenarion you should not have to manually enter 224 roster corrections. Just remove any wait period for waivers and every owner can drop and re-add to get to the correct roster.

Sorry the setuo was painfulk for you. I have drafted there many times and found it to be a fairly easy interface to manage, but I’ve never tried to deal with apostrophe’s or special characters on a league setup.

Let’s hope all of your work was wasted. :stuck_out_tongue:

159

I’m good, guy’s got wireless connection, so the only time I may not be able to pick is the ~15 minute ride from my place to his, in which case I could easily time so as to be absent during a round not affected by trade.

160

BTW, great job Ellis, all little issues that come up are being beatdown by yourself as might a gaggle of schoolchildren by Ali in his prime.