A roto review
After running an auction-esque roto for worlds that worked decently well, I cooked up the idea of running an auction roto for this year's Nationals. Since I arrived late and everyone else seemed tired we postponed the roto until after the first day of play, which turned out not to make a huge difference to the proceedings. I polled the contestants and we agreed to draft both from div 1 and collins. In retrospect, we probably should've just done div 1 due to time constraints, but having collins was fun because everyone had a chance to be drafted. We had 9 participants altogther along with about ten more onlookers, which made for a fun, convivial atmosphere with lots of booze. The players to be drafted were brought up in random order, an innovation which I think worked really well. The bidding system was such that the bids were done in the dark and revealed after 30 seconds. If there was a tie I would offer players the chance to up the bidding by conducting an out-loud auction. A coin flip was the final determiner if all other measures failed. Everyone started with 100 sheqalim/ekpwele/whatever other currency name you like. A few extra rules: contestants could draft up to 15 players but could only choose 10 among them as final representatives for their team. In addition, participants in the auction did not always know who else would bid.
Our nine participants were myself, Evans, Eric Tran, Cecilia, Benjy, Sam Rosin, Rafi, Matt Tunnicliffe and late joiner Chris Canik. As usual with these things, everyone overbid early (most notably my spectacular overbid of 15 of on Winter, the second player to come up). Hilariously, Evans had 7 of the ten members of his team locked in early and only 3 dollars left, but was unable to fill in the rest of his players until very late because Eric had extra money and kept bidding 2 dollars. Unsurprisingly, Nigel Richards garnered the highest bid of the night, drawing a bid of 32 dirhams from Chris. After it got pretty late, Rosin and Will Anderson kicked us out of their room and we migrated to Canada, courtesy of Jeremy and Tunnicliffe. Jeremy Hildebrand also threatened to kick us out after bidding for him remained too low, but mercifully reconsidered. As time went on and everyone's cash vanished some of the bids began to look comically low, including the steal of the draft, Tunnicliffe's bid of 5 ariary for Sam Kantimathi. By the end only Cecilia, Eric and Tunnicliffe had money left. Eric had been using crafty advanced statistical metrics to inform his bidding, but hadn't realized that there was a limit on the number of players who could be drafted. Conrad was the last top seed left, and because no one else had more than 3 dollars, Eric was able to rope him in for 4. Several stand-ins filled in for participants who had gone to sleep, including Kate taking over for Will Anderson who had taken over for Rafi, and a couple of other doppelgangers who I forget.
Ahead of time it seemed that those who had waited until late in the draft to obtain their players would have the edge. As the tournament went on it became clear that Matt Tunnicliffe had accomplished a veritable juggernaut of a team. He ended up surpassing any other team by 20 wins! The other placement prizes were fairly heated and came down to the wire.
Without further ado, here are the final standings. Team names are listed where the owners bothered to come up with them:
1. Matt Tunnicliffe - Way better than Evans's team - 186 - $100
2. Eric Tran - 167.5 - $60
3. Sam Rosin - 166.5 - $20
4. BNJY - BNJYTEAM - 164
5. Myself - Fast and Furious VI: The Linsanity - 163.5
6. Chris Canik - Dead Last - 161.5
7. Cecilia - 160
8. Evans - 158
9. Rafi - 156
Tunnicliffe's team was staggeringly good. All of his players finished above .500, and only one of his players ended up with 16. He ended up with the CSW champion and four top-10 finishers in TWL. Here's his team:
Sam Kantimathi - 24
Kenji Matsumoto - 20
Chris Cree - 19
Nigel Peltier - 19
David Koenig - 19
Komol - 18
Laurie Cohen - 17
Karl Higby - 17
Jon Shreve - 17
Zev Kaufman - 16
Eric was one of two players to draft up to the player limit of 15. He was extremely judicious with his finances, and was also helped by Randy Greenspan's 7-0 Day 4. Eric needed the money to make up for the fact that he was somehow liable for Evans' debt in his failed 50-to-1 bet after round 30 with Sam that Nigel wouldn't win Nationals.
Conrad BB - 19
Steve Polatnick - 18.5
Nawapadol - 18
Ian Weinstein - 17
Randy Greenspan - 17
Tony Leah - 16
Mark Kenas - 16
Steve Glass - 16
Mike Thelen - 15
Evans Clinchy - 15
Sam Rosin wisely drafted a bunch of CSW players, whose win totals ended up being boosted compared to Div 1 in TWL due to the wider spread of participants' ratings. His was the only team whose top end could rival Matt's, but the rest of his players didn't do quite as well.
Brian "the blocker" Bowman - 21.5
Orlet Bullock - 19
Jason Keller - 19
Sam Rosin - 18
Emanuel Chicoine - 17
John Van Pelt - 16
Mark Miller - 15
Thomas Reinke - 14
Robert Kaaaaaaaaaahn - 14
Bruce D'Ambrosio - 13
Cecilia and Rafi's teams both looked promising ahead of time but were let down by a few weak performances. Chris Canik predicted his own team not to do so well, but instead finished almost in the middle.
I look forward to running more auction rotos in the future, maybe with some twists to keep things interesting. What do you guys think of California Open?
Also, as an unrelated aside I want to congratulate Jason Keller on his performance at Nationals. He had a bit of a rough landing, but he had a great run near the top until the very end. Props to him.