Drafts — Overview

A draft is how teams build their starting rosters before the season. In FanPoolHQ, drafts run in a dedicated draft room that updates live for every team via Pusher — when a team picks, every other team sees the board move within a second, with no page refresh needed. Your commissioner picks the format and the start time; you show up, queue some players, and either make your picks live or let autopick handle them.

The four draft formats

You don't pick the format — your commissioner does when they set the league up. Here's how each one feels at the table:

• Snake. Picks go in serpentine order — team 1 picks first in round 1, last in round 2, first in round 3, and so on. The reverse keeps the early picks fair across the full draft. This is the default for most fantasy leagues. See Snake Draft Walkthrough for the step-by-step.
• Linear. Every round uses the same pick order — team 1 picks first in every round, team N picks last in every round. Simple to reason about; favors whoever drew the top spot, so leagues sometimes pair it with a trade-pick policy to balance things out.
• Lottery. The pick order is randomized at draft start instead of being fixed by the standings or a manual list. Once the lottery resolves, the rest of the draft typically runs as a snake from that order. Useful for leagues that don't want last-season's standings to determine this year's draft slot.
• Auction. No fixed pick order at all — every team gets a budget (configurable per league), and players go up for nomination + bidding one at a time. You nominate a player, every team has a window to bid, and the highest bid wins. The winner's budget shrinks, and a new nomination opens. See Auction Draft Walkthrough for the full flow.

What's the same across every format

No matter the format, four things hold:

1. The draft room is live. Pusher pushes every pick, every bid, and every clock change to every connected team. You don't refresh; the board moves on its own.
2. Your queue helps you. FanPoolHQ lets you maintain a personal draft queue — an ordered list of players you want, persisted across re-connections. If your pick window closes before you act, the autopick reads your queue and grabs the highest-ranked still-available player. See Draft Queue and Autopick for the details.
3. Picks are permanent once recorded. Once the draft engine writes a pick (or bid resolution) to the database, it's part of your roster. Trades are how picks move after that, not undo.
4. Position limits and salary cap apply on commit. FanPoolHQ validates the pick against your league's roster rules (position limits, cap room, contract length) at the moment of selection. If a pick would violate a rule, the dialog warns you before you confirm.

Where to go next

• Snake Draft Walkthrough — step-by-step from entering the room to making your pick.
• Auction Draft Walkthrough — nominate, bid, budget management, and the late-stage stars.
• Draft Queue and Autopick — pre-load your queue, the autopick fallback, and persistence rules.

If your league is using linear or lottery, the snake walkthrough covers 90% of the same UI — only the order display changes. Auction is the format with its own dedicated UI surface.