r/fantasybball • u/Reasonable-Bee6655 • 12h ago
Discussion Slow draft?
I've never been involved in one and now I'm setting one up. How much time should be allotted for a 240 player draft?
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u/Environmental-Yam343 14t H2H Points 12h ago
My league has people in it from all over the world so we do 12 hours. It’s actually kinda fun and less stressful.
Normally each pick takes 30 min or less, but occasionally it’s someone’s turn at 3AM local time
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u/Reasonable-Bee6655 12h ago
If I allow 30 min for 240 players that's 120 hrs.. That's 5 straight days assuming I run the draft around the clock which, because I wouldn't expect it to be international, I would not do.
Does that sound right?
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u/Environmental-Yam343 14t H2H Points 11h ago
Do not do 30 min per pick because then people will have to pick in the middle of the night. You either do 1 min per pick or at least 8 hours so people can go to bed without worrying about setting an alarm at 3AM.
Are you implying you would pause the draft before people go to bed?
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u/HeyChason 11h ago
Need to do at least 8-12 hours per pick. Otherwise there’s no point in doing a slow draft. You have to allow for situations where someone goes to sleep at 11:59 pm, and their pick starts at 12:30 am.
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u/SportGamerDev0623 7h ago
Set your pick time to 8 hours per pick and pause the time for overnight hours (like midnight-8:00AM or 10-6)
I’d say a good rule of thumb is expect each round to take 1 day.
With 240 players, I’m guessing 20 rounds for 12 teams, right?
So give yourself like a 3 week window. Then if the draft isn’t done after 3 weeks pick a day and time and say if the draft isn’t completed by this time, we will pause the draft, reset the timer at 2 min per pick and resume the draft and get it wrapped up.
I’ve done this for a couple of years now. Have never come close to my deadline time.
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u/Reasonable-Bee6655 6h ago
Very good to know. Thanks.
Three weeks, huh? I wasn’t anticipating that but it is what it is. Do you think the 6 hour time limit is too limiting just so we can rush things along a little?
I set the time for 2am because it’s only 11pm on the west coast.3
u/trala7 4h ago
6 hours vs 8 or even 10 likely won't even rush it along much. It will just create the opportunity for more auto picks which is bad for the league.
Even in slowndrafts with 12 hour clocks, most people have average pick times less than 2 hours. So the draft will move along. Each pick won't actually take the full clock or anywhere close to it. The clock is there for a odd pick where someone is busy for an extended period of time.
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u/SportGamerDev0623 4h ago edited 1h ago
In my dynasties now, we are doing 4 round rookie drafts in football and 2 round rookie drafts in basketball.
I just did my rookie draft this past weekend and it took 3 days to get through all 48 picks.
Do I really think 240 picks is going to take 21 days? If every owner is very active, no. But definitely a solid 10-14 days. People have lives and that’s the true benefit for these slow drafts is everyone can participate and not have to worry about needing to block off 2-3 hours in an evening for a draft.
Planning for 21 days gives time for people to breathe without you needing to really harp on people to pick or having to force that 2 minute timer.
With that being said, we can’t have everyone taking the full 8 hours 😂 that draft would take 4 months then 😂😂
So you need that pause and time shift at an appropriate time (~1 round/day later)
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u/Reasonable-Bee6655 2h ago
That was very helpful, SportGame. At the risk of sounding stupid, can you just clarify that last sentence?
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u/SportGamerDev0623 2h ago
Ahh, not a dumb question. It’s a poorly worded sentence.
I was just stating that even though you’re setting an 8 hour timer, you’re expecting your league mates to not use the full timer with every pick.
Like the timer is there if you really need but like try not to need it 😂So like if you have a 20 round draft, then you state 20 days after your draft starts that you are going change the time from 8 hours to 2 minutes to just get the draft wrapped up because it can’t go on forever.
But like I said, if you have an active draft, you’ll never get close to that.
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u/Reasonable-Bee6655 1h ago
Thank you for all your input.
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u/SportGamerDev0623 1h ago
No problem. Happy to share more about my experiences if you have more questions!
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u/SportGamerDev0623 1h ago
I completely glossed over the middle sentence here. 6 hours is probably fair. I don’t even know if anyone in my leagues have even used 6 hours to make a pick. I’ve had a few use 4 to 5 hours just because of their work schedules.
So for a slow draft, 6 hours is probably about as low as I would go.
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u/12monthsinlondon 4h ago
If you get / encourage a lot of trade activity, you should consider longer limits like 24 hours for the first few rounds then tightening it up eventually to 6 hours for the later rounds where you're getting into flyers anyway.
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u/Dirigible_Plums 11h ago
I run a draft with 8 hours each pick (we have players all over the globe). It normally takes about a week for it to complete, but it works for us.
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u/Reasonable-Bee6655 8h ago
8 hours may be better but I also pause for 6 hours.
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u/Dirigible_Plums 8h ago
Normally each pick was like 30-40 minutes, but occasionally we went the full length if it was overnight for them
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u/ttay24 1h ago
so we've done slow drafts for fantasy football for years with keepers (and this year in-draft trades, v fun). We do a 5 hour clock where the clock only runs from 8am to 10pm, which works pretty well and is fun. That way the night owls picking at 1am don't screw over whoever is after them
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u/Asleep-Tomatillo-367 12h ago
1 min / pick is standard; 30 seconds / pick if you want to speed it up. Honestly 1 min / pick is not too long especially if you have everyone participating in the draft.
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u/Reasonable-Bee6655 12h ago
I should have made that clearer. It will be a "slow draft". Owners will pick within an allotted time but I'd rather not subject everyone to a 3-4 hour draft room. At least if I don't have to. Getting around 12 guys to commit to a whole night can be challenging.
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u/RytisHunter 11h ago
In your other comment you said smth about 30min per pick. I believe you dont understand concept of slow draft. In my opinion you either do 12 or 24 hours per pick, most people will pick a lot faster and the draft could take a couple weeks maybe if you are all active. Or you find a date which is good everyone via vote and do normal draft 1min per pick. Because doing 30min per pick will mean that everyone will need to be active for 5 days straight, nights included and thats not possible.