Keeping pace on draft day

[annebradsmith 0]

First, thanks for the great product. DraftBuddy is exactly what i need. My league draft is a few weeks out yet, but I wanted to throw out a problem that i had last year and see what you guys have to say.

 

Our league is hosted by Yahoo and the league holds a live online draft through Yahoo. I use Draft Buddy to prepare my strategy and help me identify the best value for my team at each pick. That means that during the draft, I wait to see who my opponents select in Yahoo and then execute each selection in Draft Buddy. My 12-team league drafts 25 players, so 300 players are selected.

 

One of my challenges is keeping pace with the Yahoo draft and not falling behind in Draft Buddy. Let's figure I have 5-10 seconds to locate the player and select him without falling behind. (Some of these owners are flying just to put pressure on the next guys). Keeping pace became a challenge in the middle of the draft when the selected players weren't listed on the 240-man Overall worksheet. At that point, I'm using the find function in excel, checking for spelling errors, etc. It gets a little stressful. Late in the draft keeping pace became an even bigger challenge when the selected players were not listed in any of the worksheets.

 

Do you have any recommendations for using DraftBuddy in this time-sensitive situation?

 

 

[Mike MacGregor 20]

Hi annebradsmith. I understand that live Yahoo drafts are particularly difficult to keep up with. The reason I find is because even if one person doesn't show for the draft, then the auto-draft / computer takes over, and doesn't take nearly as long to process their pick as someone normally would. Here are some ideas to input the picks in Draft Buddy as quickly as possible:

 

1. Someone asked me to add this some time ago, and it is still a feature, just not well known. Instead of having to click the Draft Player or Undo Pick buttons, click on a player name you want to draft and use CTRL-X (to draft) or CTRL-Z (to undo last pick). This will be a little faster then always having to scroll up to the buttons after finding the player on the cheatsheets. Should work on all of the same tabs you would normally input picks from.

 

2. I would concentrate more on the offense tab (positional cheat sheet) than the overall rankings to draft players from. It is already sorted by position, and shows more players. Also, the depth tab is a good one for late in the draft.

 

3. Have you got 2 screens? For live online drafts I like 2 screens so I don't need to switch back and forth windows. One for the browser, one for Draft Buddy.

 

4. Some super-talented programmer replicate the MFL Integration feature for Yahoo leagues? Anyone? Anyone?

 

Okay, well hopefully at least the first three help!

[BigBBlue 0]

I used DB on my iPad for 2 live drafts yesterday. I would not have been able to keep up with an online draft, at least not on the iPad.

 

First draft was PPR, stickers and a board, along with the commish entering picks online to load at the conclusion. My connection was strong, and skip pick was used with varying success when I couldnt find a player that was drafted.

 

Second draft was non-PPR, different DB sheet. Live, without a board. Commish's home wifi kept kicking me out, and I had to reply on the sheets that I printed from DB. I definitely missed having other info at my disposal. Was glad I had trouble early and didnt have to try to catch up later.

 

If timing might be an issue, I would print the sheets and use DB for getting other info.

[Mike MacGregor 20]

Thanks for checking in BigBBlue with your experience using DB on the iPad. Appreciate it. I do always think it is a good idea to have printed cheat sheets as a backup, because anything can happen with any electronic device at the worst of times, so glad you were prepared that way. DB could definitely use some improvements for mobile / tablet use.