SOM site live draft

Now that the SOM Live draft option is being offered for the $140 Mil league, I would like to try it out but have some questions.

How does the one hour per pick option work with a start time of 10PM East Coast time? Does the clock turn off overnight? If so, what are the active clock hours?

How many rounds do we pick?

Do we pick a stadium?

Does the waivers period start immediately after the last pick?

Are the divisions selected before or after the draft?

We have offered Live Draft on the SOM app for 140 and 200 Mil for SEVERAL years now, but this is the first year we can try a 1-2-3 hour per pick time. 5 out of the 7 who wanted to live draft wanted 1 hour per pick, so that's what we went with since many of us in the draft have recently experienced our test draft and were impressed with it.

25 rounds in the draft, same as before. Select your stadium AFTER the draft, same as the 1 minute drafts but they are not exclusive. We are working with SOM to have a stadium pick available DURING the draft as a 26th pick (any round) - hopefully this will be in place before the finals. Optional is to turn the clock off overnight AND weekends. - In the case of the draft we just created, I am leaving the draft running for the weekend, but I think it will be finished by then. I did set clock off at 11pm est and on at 9am est. Since the draft starts an hour before that, not sure what it will do but I assume it would go into clock off mode after an hour. Picks can still be made but it wont force a pick nor will it play a queued player. Waivers starts 2 days later, same as autodraft. This is waiver NOT a frenzy. Divisions are randomized, same as autodraft. Again, we are working with SOM for more options on divisions, perhaps the commish (whoever created the league) can have these movement options. They are not in there right now.

As I've said before, the SOM live draft is a work in progress and those choosing it will roll the dice that it will be glitch free. That being said, I am extremely impressed with the work they have done on it and am grateful for the work put in on it by board member Mr. Baseball World to help SOM understand exactly our requirements and push them steadily.

Did I get all your questions answered ?

Oh and I absolutely LOVE the e-mails we get when we are ON DECK and UP. Be sure you check the e-mail address you have on file with SOM and you wont need to monitor the draft QUITE so closely.

Thanks for the information. I have only done DiamondDope drafts before. This is a little different but seems very functional.
The mock draft was helpful to get a feel for the draft and see how queues work relative to the DD proxies.

WARNING:

You get 3 separate QUEUES to use _ each are only good for 5 picks. When queue #1 runs to zero, it will default to queue #2 even if you still have players still in queue #1.

If you don’t have any players in queue #2 or #3 then it picks the highest free agent.

To avoid this, periodically rework your queues and fix the COUNTER in those queues back up to 5 ( or however many picks you want to use it for.

This is probably confusing but I can assure you it will be obvious once we start.

Unfortunately the big flaw so far is we can’t get into the draft room now but have to wait until 9:30 Wednesday

I noticed the limitations in the number of players allowed in the queues and will be asking SOM to extend to more than 5 per queue. Perhaps up to 9 or more. I used the queues (there called groups and priorities) on Diamond Dope and feel they should be more utilized.

I will ask SOM if they can find a way to allow us to get into the draft a lot earlier than 30 minutes. Perhaps 2 hours.

MM, as long as you have their ear......I’ve posted many times on the suggestion forum without a response:

See, as a draft OPTION, if they create unique STADIUM leagues where the ballpark is part of the actual draft.

I know I’m dating myself, but you’ve been around long enough I hope to remember penngray and his LIVE DRAFT ( auction and straight ) software where STADIUMS were a part of it. Then again back then we had 1/2 the amount of stadiums so it was more important but just a thought to make drafting that much more of a chess match.

Drafting a stadium is being planned. Target date is to be able to use it for our FINALS so that is EARLY 2020. Diamond Dope had the ability to draft a stadium and the Finals has required unique stadiums forever. Strategic drafting of a stadium in an early round of course was way more important when there were fewer stadiums of course, but we do want this feature to allow a stadium draft in any round.

OK, Event #6 starts tonight and since we will have from 2-3 live drafts planned for this event, I wanted to give my opinion after being in several 1-2 hour live drafts.

First, live draft is great for those who want more control than the autodraft will provide. You stand a stronger chance of putting together the type of team you want for the stadium you want when using the live draft. Now having 1-2-3 hours per pick gives an advantage that we don't all need to be online at the same time like the 1 minute drafts. It works great now that we have pushed SOM hard to enable the features we need. Being able to pick a stadium as a draft pick is also COMING.

That being said, live draft CAN BE frustrating if the participants don't (or won't) make use of the features in the app. For example, the queues (known as proxy picks on D-DOPE) are great for lining up in exacting order, what players you want to be selected NEXT. You can even use them strategically as Queue 1-2-3 to line up different player positions (ss in queue 1 for example - starting pitchers in queue 2 - etc.)

SOM has good instructions for how the queues work inside the app. HOWEVER, these work great when you use them in conjunction with the AWAY box. For the queues to work, you must check the AWAY box to enable the queued players to be played in your absence. Having picks played in your absence is better than having the draft tick away for an hour while you're somewhere else. Also, since the draft creator can also have the clock turned off at night - it's best to use the other check box to have picks played for you ALSO at night. No one wants to be "watching" the draft only to find out that you aren't around and the clock will be ticking away for 10 plus HOURS !

So please, be considerate of your fellow players. USE THE FEATURES that make live draft a viable alternative to autodraft. If we all do that, a 1-hour per pick live draft can take just a single day.

I beg of you PLEASE !!!

MM

Have you done any trials of running multiple live drafts in the same time slot? I sure hope so, I can recall numerous glitches when two live drafts were running concurrently, and not from the distant past either. Serious glitches where an entire draft froze up until the next day.

The ones we have now will be a day apart, first Tuesday and then Wednesday - so I guess "we will see". Kinda hard to get 12 people to spend 2 credits each to test something like this. If we do have a glitch, then SOM will have some 'splainin to do, possible credits to be returned - draft to evaluated and possibly restart or resume