Most fair waiver process

[Slackalacker]

Hey guys, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the many forms of waiver processing that exist in dynasty formats, most specifically which form you think is the most fair and why?

Currently my league runs weekly waivers, and the order is inverse of the overall record with tiebreaker being least points scored. Pretty standard format id say. The purpose of this is to benefit people who suck so they have a better chance of getting a good waiver pickup therefore increasing league competition.

A couple members question the fairness. Mainly because they are already winning teams and dont always get the pickups they want. Not that I care, I'm constantly the very lowest waiver priority due to being the highest scoring team and I can't complain, I just know I have to do my research and try to work the FA pool during the week and make a pickup before they blowup.

What do you + your league think is the most fair way of processing waivers? I've included a poll (with a non exhaustive list) but feel free to share and discuss why you think how you think. I put this here and not in the commissioner forum cause this is more of an open discussion about waivers from everyone's viewpoint.

[Valhalla]

Blind bid. Make the budget 1000+, to avoid tying bids.
In the event of a tie, they could either do a second blind bid between those tying teams (how much additional to add to the first bid) or somehow add in a tie-breaker amount to the original bid.
Say I want to bid 176 on player x. If (by some crazy chance) I tied someone else for the winning bid, I could decide that I would push as high as 200. The original bid submitted could then be :176 (tiebreak+24). Of course, you need a website that would support this. I'm not sure if MFL does.

[Valhalla]

On second thought...just make the bidding budget 10,000 and ask that people put in some randomness into their bid number. The bigger the budget, the smaller the chance that two people bid the same figure. It's easy to determine bids if you keep it a base 10. If you want to bid ~15% of your budget, you will be paying approximately 1500. Make the number something like 1523 or something and the chances of ties is almost nil. Instruct league-mates to not bid clean amounts like 1500.

[Ruggenater]

Is non-blind FAAB bidding a real option somewhere? That seems interesting, but I'd be concerned about alerting others to my "under the radar" planned pickups.

I also think blind FAAB bidding is the way to go. Similar to auction start-ups, everyone gets an equal shot at every player.

The worst choice IMO is having waivers that reset weekly to the inverse of the current standings. There's too much variability early in the season, which is when the most valuable waiver pickups occur. You'll often see slow-starting strong teams end up getting that much stronger this way.

[rubber_duck]

I would add to the above, the BB money rolls over from year to year. Put another way, the BB dollars are not "use them or lose them", but instead could be accumulated from season to season.

The money could also be used to fine tune a trade deal.

[BigJoeWall72]

I'm surprised to see blind bidding running away with this so far. I've never really been a huge fan of it before (I don't absolutely hate it, it's just not my preferred method). Has anyone played in a league where the Blind Bidding Dollars were determined based on reverse standings from the previous year? So that teams who finished near the bottom in 2016 would have a little more BBD for 2017 than the team that won the league?

[rubber_duck]

Has anyone played in a league where the Blind Bidding Dollars were determined based on reverse standings from the previous year? So that teams who finished near the bottom in 2016 would have a little more BBD for 2017 than the team that won the league?

Yes, and it works very well.
Big fan.

[Slackalacker]

I'm also surprised the blind bidding is so high.

I'm unaware of a real method where non blind is possible but I thought it throw it out anyways for increased discussion purposes

[jeffster]

BBD works great. I think using an uneven BBD allocation based on last year's finish makes some sense, but I'm a little ambivalent about it. In my experience the teams that chronically lose usually have lots of their BBD left at the end of the year, because it's not lack of resources that's the problem, it's lack of involvement.

I bet if you looked across a bunch of leagues you would find unused BBD is a pretty strong predictor of low rankings.

[Cowboysfan33]

BBD works great. I think using an uneven BBD allocation based on last year's finish makes some sense, but I'm a little ambivalent about it. In my experience the teams that chronically lose usually have lots of their BBD left at the end of the year, because it's not lack of resources that's the problem, it's lack of involvement.

I bet if you looked across a bunch of leagues you would find unused BBD is a pretty strong predictor of low rankings.

Totally agree with your post. I'm a big fan of BBD and in my longest running dynasty leagues(3rd year now) there's certain teams that have probably around 90% of their money which rolls over each season, all of those teams are generally the worst teams in these leagues. I don't understand these owners and their lack of involvement, once the season gets here but to each their own, I guess.

[skip]

For years all of my leagues used some kind of a standard waiver process. I prefer an auction/blind bid format as it puts everyone on an even playing field

[Slackalacker]

Is there a format where bidding is only required on what would be considered a waiver pickup, and when players reach FA they can be picked up without a bid or does auction always mean that you have to bid and wait overnight for any pickup you make?

[jeffster]

Is there a format where bidding is only required on what would be considered a waiver pickup, and when players reach FA they can be picked up without a bid or does auction always mean that you have to bid and wait overnight for any pickup you make?

The most common format is BBD that clears one day a week (Wednesday morning is a good choice) followed by first-come-first-serve until kickoff, at which time everyone locks and bids for the next round can be placed.

[Quinty]

1) Waivers are suppose to help the worst teams, not the best teams. Remember, in the NFL, the worst team gets the first shot to pick up guys who have to go through waivers.

2) If I takeover a team and have to rebuild, I need to take more shots at finding guys on waivers. If I have a stacked/playoff caliber team, I can be picky and take less shots but spend more on the 1 or 2 guys that might be worth it.

3) If there is that much good talent on the WW, then you need to INCREASE your rosters. It won't matter what waiver system you use when the waiver wire is barren.

TL,DR: FABB is great for redraft, but a poor idea for dynasty leagues.

*FABB means Free Agent Blind Bidding to me. I'm not sure what the second 'A' in FAAB is.

The preferred waiver system:
After Week 1 games - use inverse end of year standings from the previous year. Worst team gets first waiver pick.
After Week 2 and all other games - whatever non FABB system you want.

[Slackalacker]

^ I see FAAB referenced a lot I always assumed it was free agent auction bidding but when I type that out it sounds grammatically poor