A complaint about Laptops....

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:47 am

I want to point out one other fact about laptops: On Sunday in the Las Vegas Ultimate Draft League where owners paid $5,000 each, only ONE team had a laptop. FOURTEEN owners used Cheat Sheets and their own rankings on pieces of paper to draft. ONE team had a laptop and they obviously were tracking players and categories with the RotoLab software. But I thought that was very, very interesting and old school. And I loved it.

headhunters · Post by **headhunters** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:10 am

our chicago draft was great. one team missed the clock 6 times. no one complained, the rules were kept and we moved on. whoever ran chicago did a nice job also. all 4 leagues finished within 15 minutes of each other. our league had slow drafters, fast drafters and guys like me that asked about guys that were taken. nice job.

reservoirdawgs · Post by **reservoirdawgs** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:01 pm

Thanks for chiming in Greg. I want to reiterate how happy I was with the pace in LV10 and the $650 AL only auction (I think the second one). In my opinion the facilitators and the guys doing the boards were excellent! I had a great time and to be honest can't see a year in my future without playing in the NFBC...this was the first auction and draft I ever participated in 17 years where I used a laptop and I thought it went well...my concern in the earlier post was that looking forward to next year I feel there is a risk to preparing with a laptop based on the luck of the draw of the facilitators but knowing that I will just have to have a contingency...no big deal...thanks again to you and all of the people that make this awesome!

Dyv · Post by **Dyv** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:56 pm

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:

I want to point out one other fact about laptops: On Sunday in the Las Vegas Ultimate Draft League where owners paid $5,000 each, only ONE team had a laptop. FOURTEEN owners used Cheat Sheets and their own rankings on pieces of paper to draft. ONE team had a laptop and they obviously were tracking players and categories with the RotoLab software. But I thought that was very, very interesting and old school. And I loved it.

So the guys who ponied up the $5k couldn't afford laptops?

That's sad.... I hope when one of you guys win you can afford to buy yourself some techie toys!!

(and for the record, I've played in the $5k league AND I brought a laptop to a draft once - but I'm a paper guy ... I never even took the laptop out of it's bag )

Our draft in LV4 was slow as molasses, but other than having to walk around the room some in between picks it was fine. The moderator (Ben) gave me some crap for mis-calling an already taken player a few times but I felt I was justified in tossing out some already picked names since he numbed my brain some with stories of every pick and where he took them in his various fantasy drafts and also who he traded them for and some of there personal trivia he had stored in his brain. Smart, and nice guy - but I would have hired someone else for running commentary

All in all, a good fun draft - good group of owners in LV4. I understand the monotony of it and I don't blame the grp for having a little ad-libbing from the mods. I wish others in 'speed drafting' leagues would have been quieter while walking by while we were still idling, but a good draft day experience to be sure.

Dyv

[ March 18, 2008, 11:01 PM: Message edited by: Dyv ]

sethpoppel · Post by **sethpoppel** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:39 pm

Re: Laptops

In an auction league there is a lot of data flying around pretty rapidly (moreso than in a draft league where I am comfortable with paper checklists). I found that in our auction league the people with computers picked up several "misses" on both money left for the various teams, and even one improper position situation. I agree that someone who uses a laptop and slows down an auction because of it is a PITA, but without laptops in our auction we would have had to rewind even more than we did, and the league would have wound up with an illegal team.

Nothing wrong with "laptops"...just a few users who can't input and process fast enough (and they, most likely, without the laptop would be calling out previously taken players near the end or asking for repeats on prices and which teams players were taken by, causing just as much as a delay as with their laptops....so the problem is the player!!)

B&B · Post by **B&B** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:20 pm

I wouldn't do the league if I couldn't use a laptop. I'm a numbers guy and need the data right in front of me. As long as someone picks in the 1 min window I have no problems with the length of the draft.