Draft Room Nomination Formats Last Updated August 24, 2022

The following is a guide to educate you on all the nomination formats available on Drafty. Here's the gist:

  • The Freeze Tag format enables teams to nominate at any moment and puts them on a cooldown until their nominee has been drafted.
  • The Round Robin format is the traditional method used by mainstream sites whereby teams take turns nominating in between auctions.
  • The Snake format is like Round Robin, but reverses the turn order at the end of each cycle.
  • The Winner Takes Next format gives the winner of each auction the privilege of nominating the next player.
  • The Czar format gives commish sole power to nominate players in whatever order they see fit.

Freeze Tag Nomination Format

Drafty strives to make auction drafts more approachable for first-timers and seasoned veterans who may be afraid to take the plunge. As part of that mission, we use a proprietary default nomination format called Freeze Tag that shortens auction draft times so that they are comparable in length to a classic snake draft.

Find out how our Freeze Tag nomination format eliminates 30-60 minutes of downtime from your auction draft experience.

In the Freeze Tag format, teams can nominate one player at a time and then their nomination privilege is frozen. Once their nominated player comes up for auction, they are put on a cooldown before they are allowed to nominate another player. Nominated players are put into the universal auction queue.

The start of the draft is a bit of a free-for-all as teams clamor to nominate quickly and be first in line, but beyond the initial frenzy it feels very turn-based as cooldowns will stagger. There is an extra thrill in the event that someone neglects their cooldown and another leaguemate steals their place in the queue.

When a team empties their budget and/or fills their roster, they are no longer allowed to nominate.

The Freeze Tag nomination format is easy to learn and keeps the action moving without having to wait for an indecisive leaguemate to spend 30-45 seconds in between each auction to choose the next player.

Round Robin Nomination Format

The Round Robin nomination format is the most traditional format in mainstream auction drafts. Instead of a frenzy at the start, the privilege to nominate follows a strict turn sequence (defined by the commish during draft room creation) and nominations occur between player auctions.

An example Round Robin turn sequence for a 10-team draft would be: 1-2-...-9-10-1-2-...-9-10-1-2-...

The turn sequence will skip any team that is disconnected or has a full roster or empty budget.

Auction drafts using this format will last 30-60 minutes longer than when using the Freeze Tag nomination format.

Snake Nomination Format

Just like Round Robin, the Snake nomination format follows a turn sequence (defined by the commish during draft room creation) and nominations occur between player auctions.

An example Snake turn sequence for a 10-team draft would be: 1-2-...-9-10-10-9-...-2-1-1-2-...

The turn sequence will skip any team that is disconnected or has a full roster or empty budget.

Auction drafts using this format will last 30-60 minutes longer than when using the Freeze Tag nomination format.

Winner Takes Next Nomination Format

Hopefully self-explanatory, but in the Winner Takes Next nomination format, the privilege of nominating a player is given to the team who just won the previous player auction.

If the winner of the prior auction has just filled their roster or spent all their budget, the nomination turn will temporarily proceed as Round Robin, following a turn sequence (defined by the commish during draft room creation) until an eligible team ("eligible" = connected, with roster and budget to spend) is found.

Auction drafts using this format will last 30-60 minutes longer than when using the Freeze Tag nomination format.

Czar Nomination Format

The Czar nomination format gives the fantasy league commissioner (AKA the commish, AKA the draft host, AKA the person who created the draft room, AKA the "Czar") full power/responsibility of nominating players.

Commish can queue up an unlimited number of players to keep the action moving, and the opening bid for each player auction is totally up for grabs (commish does not place an automatic opening bid). If a player auction finishes and no one has placed a bid, the player is moved to the bottom of Undrafted Players where they can be re-nominated later.

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