Hello friends!
Today, I come to you with an idea myself and many others have discussed this on Smogtours each of the past 2 years. It's no secret that the Snake draft format innately makes it harder to reward good managers than it's auction-based counterpart, SPL. So, how about a way to make the draft a bit more rewarding and theoretically help stronger managers stand out in the tournament?
What I am referring to, as alluded to by the title of this thread, is the act of trading draft picks. The concept that I am proposing would be simple. If a manager had the 2nd overall pick and the corresponding 19th pick, they could conduct a trade with someone else and acquire their picks. They could get the 3rd and 18th overall picks for example, or perhaps swap third- or fifth- round picks even. We could also do trades that don't involve pick swaps, but these would be a bit more complicated, and I believe the TDs wish to maintain the '14 player requirement' for every team, so that idea might be a bit of a tougher pill to swallow.
This idea brings forth some of the strategy involved in past SPLs with the concept of trading retains, only in this setting, a manager can't be held hostage by their star players. The rewards for this system are obvious. Teams could make pretty mutually beneficial trades depending on their evaluation of certain players. The managers who ultimately better understand the playerbase could gain an advantage by trading up or down. This Snake is a good example. There's a pretty steep drop-off after ABR based on the current player pool, so the manager picking 2nd might find it in his best interest to trade down if he knows the player he wants will be available later. Or the individual with the first pick might not want ABR, so he could proceed to trade the first pick for a king's ransom of pick swaps.
The only downside to this idea is that it would make the draft slightly more convoluted, but the idea that I am proposing is pretty simple. You could even lock trades so that they could only occur before the draft, if you don't want to deal with the hassle of live trades. Personally, I think it would work either way.
I think this idea will bring a bit more hype and fun to a tournament almost everyone sees as an inferior SPL. The concept of trading picks is obviously the foundation of American sports leagues, and with a few modifications, I don't see any reason why they couldn't work in this tour. This idea is simple and helps reward more intelligent managers.
Today, I come to you with an idea myself and many others have discussed this on Smogtours each of the past 2 years. It's no secret that the Snake draft format innately makes it harder to reward good managers than it's auction-based counterpart, SPL. So, how about a way to make the draft a bit more rewarding and theoretically help stronger managers stand out in the tournament?
What I am referring to, as alluded to by the title of this thread, is the act of trading draft picks. The concept that I am proposing would be simple. If a manager had the 2nd overall pick and the corresponding 19th pick, they could conduct a trade with someone else and acquire their picks. They could get the 3rd and 18th overall picks for example, or perhaps swap third- or fifth- round picks even. We could also do trades that don't involve pick swaps, but these would be a bit more complicated, and I believe the TDs wish to maintain the '14 player requirement' for every team, so that idea might be a bit of a tougher pill to swallow.
This idea brings forth some of the strategy involved in past SPLs with the concept of trading retains, only in this setting, a manager can't be held hostage by their star players. The rewards for this system are obvious. Teams could make pretty mutually beneficial trades depending on their evaluation of certain players. The managers who ultimately better understand the playerbase could gain an advantage by trading up or down. This Snake is a good example. There's a pretty steep drop-off after ABR based on the current player pool, so the manager picking 2nd might find it in his best interest to trade down if he knows the player he wants will be available later. Or the individual with the first pick might not want ABR, so he could proceed to trade the first pick for a king's ransom of pick swaps.
The only downside to this idea is that it would make the draft slightly more convoluted, but the idea that I am proposing is pretty simple. You could even lock trades so that they could only occur before the draft, if you don't want to deal with the hassle of live trades. Personally, I think it would work either way.
I think this idea will bring a bit more hype and fun to a tournament almost everyone sees as an inferior SPL. The concept of trading picks is obviously the foundation of American sports leagues, and with a few modifications, I don't see any reason why they couldn't work in this tour. This idea is simple and helps reward more intelligent managers.
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