RotoWire MLB Commissioner services come with a Live Auction Draft Room where teams can bid on players in real time for no additional charge. Our service is built in conjunction with FantasyAuctioneer.com.

Before you use our auction room, please make sure you run our browser tests to ensure system compatibility. Please click here to test your browser. (IE 5.0+ or Netscape 6.0+ required).

To set up the Live Auction Draft Room for your league, follow these steps:

• Please go to the Admin Tools area and click on the "League Auction Setup" link.
• Schedule a time and date for your auction.
• Set the parameters of your league draft.
• Have league members login to the "Edit Team/Set Lineup" link in the left nav of the League HQ area (main page after logging in to league).
• League members will need to register their team before the draft by clicking on the "League Auction" link within the "Edit Team/Set Lineup" area.. They'll need to have a RotoWire username (although no further expense or payment is needed).
• Each auction must have a team which will act as commissioner. The commissioner will have the ability to start and pause the auction, rollback mistakes and change the bid and selection time limits during the auction .
• If you are offline or can't attend the auction, you can enter values for players ahead of the draft via the "Edit Team/Set Lineup" area. Click on the "League Auction" link and then the "Prerank Your Players" link in the center of the page. The computer player that will take over for you will treat these values as the maximums it will bid for each player.
• To enter your draft, access it via the "Edit Team/Set Lineup" and then "League Auction" links. You'll then click on a link on that page that says "Enter Draft."
• You will be able to enter your auction starting a half hour before the auction start time. To do this you will need to log in to the owners's "Edit Team/Set Lineup" area. Owners who are not present at the start of the auction will have the computer bid on players for them.
• At the end of the auction your results will be emailed to every league member and the rosters will automatically be imported into your league at midnight.

Here are some FAQs that address other major issues/questions. Email us at support@rotowire.com if you have more quesitons.

 

1.	How exactly does the Live Auction Draft Room work?
2.	What new features are available in v. 2.0 of the Live Auction Draft Room?
3.	How do I assign keepers to their teams?
4.	I can't make it to my auction. How do I input my value list for the computer player to follow?
5.	How do I reschedule my auction or change any of my auction settings?
6.	If auction drafting is so great, why do less than 20% of fantasy fans currently use it?
7.	Are there any drawbacks to auction drafting?
9.	How do I prepare for my auction?
9.	What are some good auction strategies to keep in mind?
10.	What future enhancements can we expect to see on this site?

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1. How exactly does the Live Auction Draft Room work?
The Live Auction Draft Room allows owners to bid on players in real time. We will have the following three products that feature the live auction room for Baseball 2005:

$69.99 per league - The Live Auction Draft Room comes at no additional charge with RotoWire.com's baseball commissioner. You can auction-draft and the results are automatically posted on your leauge's website. Our league manager is renowned for being commissioner-friendly and very customizable. Our customer service is also top-notch.

$26.99 per league - A stand-alone auction-draft with no commissioner service. If you prefer this option, please visit http://www.fantasyauctioneer.com

$39.99 per team - This is our auction-draft money league, click here to join. We are providing the league manager software as well as acting as the commissioner - resolving disputes, handling pay-outs, and running the league in general. First place wins $200 and second place gets a free team in 2006.

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2. What new features are available in v. 2.0?
Version 2.0 of the Live Auction Draft Room is live! Key new features include:

1. Corner Infielder, Middle Infielder, and Reserve positions.
2. A roll-back feature that allows commissioners to roll-back any mistaken bids or to resolve any connection issues.
3. Control over the A.I. For those unable to make it to the auction, they can input their cheat sheet, which the A.I. will follow.
4. Much more commissioner control than in v. 1.0: control over the auction's start (no longer automatic), ability to reschedule auctions, change auction details, etc.
5. Keeper league support that allows commissioners to input keepers and their respective salaries prior to the auction. Please email support@rotowire.com to get help with our keeper league support.
6. A "Preselect Player Nomination List" allowing users to put together a queue for those players they want to put on the auction block during the auction.
7. A "Transaction History" window showing what players have been sold, who nominated them, to whom they were sold, and for how much.
8. A "Team Details" window showing who is online, what their maximum bids are, when it's their turn to nominate a player, etc.).
9. And much more!

3. How do I assign keepers to their teams?
There are two ways the Live Auction Draft Room can handle keepers. The first is to just have team owners bid and win players at their keeper amounts. The second is to contact support@rotowire.com and ask to be set up with a keeper league Live Auction Draft Room. You'll be assigned a draft room directly at the Fantasyauctioneer.com site. To assign keepers to their teams via Fantasyauctioneer.com, the commissioner must first go to the My Auctions page. From there, click on the auction for which you want to set the league's keepers. This will take you to the Auctions Details page, where there is a "Set Keepers" link. Click on "Set Keepers" to go to the Set Keepers page where you can assign keepers and set their salaries accordingly. Note that league members need to sign up for the auction before you can assign their keepers, so please have them sign up as soon as possible. Once the draft is finished you can contact support@rotowire.com and ask to have the results imported into the RotoWire commissioner league of your choice.

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4. I can't make it to my auction. How do I input my value list for the computer player to follow?
You can enter values for players ahead of the draft that the computer player will follow if you cannot make the auction or need to arrive early or leave late. First, please go to the "Edit Team/Set Lineup" area. Click on the "League Auction" link and then the "Prerank Your Players" link in the center of the page. This will launch our value list tool that will help you put together your value list by allowing you to generate mock auctions easily. The idea is that if your value list is accurate, a mock auction will result in teams that are relatively equal in strength. The value list tool will allow you to see these teams side-by-side for easy comparison. If you see that some teams are noticeably stronger and/or weaker than others, that means that players on stronger teams are underpriced and those on weaker teams are overpriced. Adjust accordingly and generate another mock auction, compare again, and adjust as needed. Iterating on this process a few times should help you put together a solid price list which you can save. Saving it will then tie the Artificial Intelligence to this list as the computer player will follow it during your auction. If you must show up late to your auction, save your price list for the A.I. to follow. When you log in late, the A.I. will relinquish control and you can participate from then on.

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5. How do I reschedule my auction or change any of my auction settings?
To change the start time of your auction or any other league setting, the commissioner must go to the Admin Tools area and click on the "League Auction Setup" link. From there, the commissioner can change any of the settings and save it.

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6. If auction drafting is so great, why do less than 20% of fantasy sports fans currently use it?
Auction drafting has not hit the mainstream simply because there is no software available that facilitates auction drafting the way it should be - nothing, that is, until now. Current systems either utilize an email format that could take weeks to complete or an eBay-like format that, although much better, still doesn't capture auction drafting the way it should be. The biggest problem with the eBay-like format, where a time limit is given and 10-20 players are placed on the auction block at the same time, is that it allows users to enter last-second bids that others will not be able to counter. Another problem is that with so many players on the block at the same time, it makes it very difficult to keep track of what positions have been filled by what teams. The Fantasy Auctioneer stays true to the traditional auction draft process, exactly how it should be run - one player at a time, managers entering their bids, and the player getting sold when nobody outbids the highest bidder after a certain amount of time ("Going once:going twice:.SOLD!"). It allows people to keep track of other teams' rosters and bid accordingly, which is a significant part of auction strategy.

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7. Are there any drawbacks to auction drafting?
Two of the biggest knocks on auctioning is that 1) it takes too long and 2) beginners wouldn't have any idea how much to pay for any particular player. The reason it takes too long is that you have to have a very disciplined auctioneer to keep the auction's pace going. This is where the Live Auction Draft Room comes in. It paces the auction perfectly, forcing managers to decide within a given timeframe (which the commissioner can adjust before and during the auction) what players to place on the auction block or the system will choose for them. It also strictly enforces the predetermined idle bidding time limit (which the commissioner can also adjust before and during the auction) before the player on the block is sold. Auctioning with the Live Auction Draft Room, for the most part, takes about the same amount of time as snake drafting.

As for first-timers and casual fans not knowing what to bid on whom, the system provides "Suggested Retail Prices" (SRP) for each fantasy player to give them an idea of how much players should go for. Also, we have a Value List Tool that will help first-timers and auction veterans alike prepare their own list. Finally, it can actually be argued that those new to fantasy sports will be able to field a much better team in an auction rather than a snake draft. Consider the rookie diehard Giants fan who selects five Giants in the first five rounds - a recipe for disaster. In an auction, he or she will only have to pay the "going market price" for these players. Of course, if other league members take advantage of this affinity for the Giants and bid their prices up, the prices will be a bit inflated. Even if this happens, the Giants fan will still have enough money to pay for high-caliber players.

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10. What future enhancements can we expect to see to the Live Auction Draft Room?

A.	Flash front-end. We plan to implement a Flash front-end that will: a) make start-up much easier (no more Sun download needed), b) make the Auctioneer compatible with many other browsers, and c) make the Auctioneer much more aesthetically pleasing.
B.	Basketball, Football, and more. We plan to have basketball online in 2005, so make sure to check it out. We are also looking into having hockey, NASCAR, and other sports available, but in a longer timeframe. Please email support@fantasyauctioneer.com if you are interested in any particular sport.
C.	Live Auction-Draft Tool. We will be coming out with a version of the Auctioneer that will host auction-drafts for leagues that prefer to do it live and in the same location. It will also support having any subset of the league participate remotely. Now you can hold your live auction and have an automatic export feature to a league management service.
D.	Snake Draft Tool. Although we are leading the charge to bring auction-drafting to the mainstream, we will also begin offering a live, real-time snake draft tool.

These are only a few of the upcoming features we are working on. We pride ourselves in our never-ending attempt to give you, the fantasy sports fan, the best of what the game has to offer, so we encourage any and all suggestions to be emailed to support@rotowire.com.

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