The most common draft order format in fantasy leagues is the Snake (or Serpentine) draft order.   The draft 'snakes' through the number of managers. The order for a twelve manager league would be 1-12 in the first round, then 12-1 in the second round, then 1-12 in the third round and so on. In a regular season draft, this approach is reasonable, but one may want to consider other approaches for the postseason. The reason for reconsidering your draft order configuration is that the scoring is highly leveraged towards the players that go multiple rounds. Players on teams that make the NBA and NHL championship games can often play 3x or 4x the number of games as other players. For some sports like the NBA playoffs, this is exacerbated by the fact that superstars dominate the scoring in the postseason. In one particular league I was in last year, Lebron James and Steph Curry (the overall #1 and #2 total fantasy points scorers) scored almost twice as many points as the 6th place scorer (Dwight Howard). This fact leaves those picking lower down in the draft with exasperation, leaving them to hope for significant upsets in the postseason.

 

At Fantasy Postseason, we provide a number of options to level the playing field, making fantasy in the postseason fun and competitive. We offer configuration settings that allow managers to draft players more than once - which deepens the field of players. We also support a "Tournament Style" game that allows managers to start who they want, but only a limited number of times. This closely mimics a 'Daily' fantasy game in that managers make start/sit decisions on a per game or per round or per week basis.

 

Beyond game format changes, we also provide a number of alternative draft options. In addition to supporting traditional Snake and Straight draft order formats, we provide Banzai and Third Round Reversal (3RR) draft formats. These formats cater to those drafting lower in the order by shifting the draft order after the 3rd round.

 

You can see these how this ordering plays out in a 12 manager league:

 

• Banzai-Draft: In a Banzai-Draft, only the third round is flipped, resulting in Rounds 2-4 all being backwards from the original order. For example:

Round 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Round 2: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Round 3: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Round 4: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Round 5: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

 

• 3RR-Draft: In a Third Round Reversal-Draft, draft order is like a snake draft except that the person who drafts first in Round 1 goes last in Round 2 and Round 3 (meaning that the person going last in Round 1 goes first in Round 2 and Round 3). After that change in Round 3, it continues to snake down the draft board, just like before. For example:

Round 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Round 2: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Round 3: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Round 4: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Round 5: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

When setting up your postseason leagues this year, consider trying an alternative draft order.