I received an email from Mario, who used the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy last year for his auction draft, but had some issues with Buddy during the auction. He’d like some tips on how do use it, and what to do if something goes wrong, like missing a pick.

My email response to Mario seemed like it would be helpful to more than a few people, so I decided to reproduce it here. At this point let’s assume you’ve followed all the basic steps in the instructions to produce your cheatsheets in the Compiler, and you were able to get the cheatsheets into Draft Buddy. Picking it up from there, here we go with Draft Buddy:

1. Close the Cheatsheet Compiler file, and any other spreadsheets. This should help the speed performance of Draft Buddy.

2. Input the team and/or owner names on the setup tab in the nomination order for your auction.

3. Check your auction input tab, as the names should flow through under the Nominating Team heading. Now you are essentially ready to start your auction draft.

Tip: If the names aren’t flowing through to your auction input tab (or draft input tab), it probably means the formulas got removed from those tabs under the Nomination Order heading (or Original Draft Pick Owner heading). That’s fine. That can happen for a couple reasons. To fix it though, try changing the Nomination Order option (or Draft Order option) at the top of that tab from Serpentine to Straight, wait a second, and change it back again. Or vice versa, Straight to Serpentine, and back to Straight.

4. The auction starts and the first player is nominated. Find that player on the hitters or pitchers tab (I find it easiest to work from these tabs), click on his name and hit the Nominate Player button. It should take you to the auction input tab, where you’ll see that player next to the first nomination spot.

5. Now that player is won at auction with a final winning bid. Click on the cell to the left of the player under the Winning Bidder heading, and using the drop-down that appears, choose the team that won the player. Now go to the cell to the right of the player under the Actual Bid heading, and input the winning bid. At this point, the player should be removed from the cheatsheets, updated on the roster for the team that won him, and remaining dollars updated for that team on the summary tab.

6. Repeat steps 3-4 for each player through the entire auction.

That’s it. Easy, right? Yes, pretty straight forward, but check the following notes for tips to speed things up and how to correct if (when) you fall behind or miss recording a pick, or if you can’t find a player on your cheatsheets.

• If the team that nominated the player is the same as the winning bidder team, then you don’t need to input the winning bidder team. This is especially prevalent late in the auction when a lot of players are going for $1, and will definitely save you some time.

   

• If the player you clicked is incorrect, then you can use the Undo button to bring him back to the cheatsheets. There is another, fail safe way to go back and clear picks on the auction input tab, as follows: highlight cells for the picks you want to change under any of Winning Bidder, Pos, Player, Actual Bid columns, and click Delete (on a Windows PC), or choose Edit > Clear > Contents (Mac). This restores everything back to the prior point in the auction depending how much you remove.

   

• If you miss a pick, you don’t necessarily have to go back and re-input all the picks you put in since then. Option one, use the current blank pick to get caught up. The important thing is getting the Winning Bidder team and Actual Bid marked correctly for each player, not really which team initially nominated the player. Option two, you can move those prior picks up or down your auction input tab, by highlighting, copying and pasting, instead of deleting as in the prior point. Say I miss pick #2 and have #3 in the second slot, #4 in the third slot and #5 in the fourth slot. I simply highlight the Winning Bidder, Pos, Player and Actual Bid amount for the picks I did input (picks #3, #4, #5), copy those cells (CTRL-C or Command-C), move the active cell down one, to the third slot, and paste (CTRL-V or Command-V).

   

• If a team’s roster is full and no longer nominating players, then unfortunately – since I’ve never been able to dynamically program this – the team still appears under the Nominating Team heading on the auction input tab. Two thoughts to adjust for this: 1. As mentioned above, it doesn’t really matter who Buddy says nominated a player, as long as you fill in the correct Winning Bidder team, and 2. You can skip around the auction input tab and line up a player with the proper nominating team (although you would have to manually input the player instead of using the Nominate Player buttons).

   

• If you can’t find a player on your cheatsheets, then you may need to manually input a player directly on the auction input tab. Manually inputting a player involves selecting the position under Pos on the auction input tab, and then selecting the player using the available drop-down under Player Name. As long as you have the Select Players option at the top of the auction input tab set to “Alphabetical”, the player drop-down includes every single player who was in the Cheatsheet Compiler, whether ranked or not.

   

• Late in the auction, don’t worry about tracking every single pick. When players go off the board quickly, since nearly every team is almost out of money, it can get tough to track. Instead, check your remaining dollars and remaining roster spots, identify what positions you need or want to fill, and list out some players to target. I might put them in the late picks on the auction input tab, or type them off to the side. Watch if they get grabbed, so you know you need to add to your list, but it is good to have a short-list at that stage so you aren’t fumbling through who to nominate, and you know your roster limit – how many spots you have left – so you can think about the tough choices about who to try to get, and who you have to leave behind.

Okay, I hope that helps those of you using Draft Buddy for your auction drafts. Some of these tips even apply for pick style drafts. Good luck!