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Below is a description of the "semi-blind" draft that we used in forming teams for the league:
The idea behind the "semi-blind" draft is to take the randomness and inability to stack teams of a full blind draft,
but combine it with a draft that takes into account the strength of the captains.
In a "normal" draft, each captain goes in turn picking his/her player of choice from the pool of remaining players.
Usually this is done with a rating system such that the captains would themselves fall into the draft, and thus a captain
who would be considered a third-round pick would not have a pick in the third round (essentially picking themselves). The
problem with a normal draft is that players seek out and hide information about players in the draft that are really good
but no one knows it. Thus they can try to select a player lower in the draft that really should have gone earlier, and in
the worst cases, they will talk up players as being really good who aren't quite as good (or injured, etc.) as the round they
might be going in. Not that this group of captains is that nefarious, but this drafting method is really quite a competition
in itself, and almost never forms equal teams.
In a "blind" draft, the captains go through the above-mentioned process, round-by-round selecting players to
form a team. However, at the end, each of these teams is then randomly assigned to the captains such that no one gets the
team he/she selected. The idea is that no captain would want to make a really awesome team that some other captain is going
to get. Unfortunately, this form of draft makes equal teams NOT counting the captains, so it gives too much weight to the
playing level of the captains themselves. So if Team A has captains who would be first and second round picks, that team
will almost surely be better than team B that has captains that are not as good of players, since Team A would ALSO have selections
from the first and second rounds. This method really only works when all of the captains are of the same ability level.
The proposed semi-blind draft would look to combine the strengths of these two drafts: the blind aspect of the latter
such that players are randomly assigned and there is no attempt to stack teams or deceive others, and the captains-drafted-at-their-ability-level
aspect of the former. Basically, we would have all of the captains TOGETHER select the top six players available for each
round (players 1-6 in round one, players 7-12 in round two, and so on -- drafting men and women separately). Then those six
players would be randomly distributed to each team for that round, excepting when a player is one of the captains -- wherein
of course that captain is his/her own pick for the round. Additionally, any captain that "drafts" a player that
has a "paired" player (husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend, etc.) must automatically take that other player whenever
that person comes up within his/her appropriate selection round. These pairings would then be kept, but they would be randomly
assigned to a team just as all the players except the captains are randomly assigned to teams. Again, this seeks to form
some equity by not allowing a captain to take a low-level male earlier in the men's draft just so that they can guarantee
themselves the awesome female counterpart to that person. The only thing we'll be careful of or possibly not allow is two
players asking to pair together who would otherwise go in the same round or who are a most definite top choice such that they
shouldn't be on the same team.
By a decision from the captains, there will also be the option for up to 3 trades per team, as long as the trades are
no more than 1 round up or down. Also, trades must be agreed upon by ALL captains, not just those involved in the trade.
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