Snake Draft Walkthrough

What to expect

The snake draft room has three areas that matter while you're picking. The draft board down the side shows every team's picks round by round, with the active team highlighted. The available-player list in the middle is the pool of players still on the board, filterable by name and position. The pick clock at the top counts down on whichever team is currently picking — when it's your turn, the room highlights your slot and starts the clock against your time.

Picks are pushed in real time over Pusher. You don't refresh, you don't reload — when a team in front of you grabs a player, that player disappears from the available list within a second, and the clock advances to the next team. The round-end transition is the only visible "flip": when round 1 closes, the order reverses for round 2, and you'll see your slot move to the other end of the board.

Making your pick

Open the draft room. You'll land on the live board with your team highlighted on whichever pick is yours next. If the draft hasn't started yet, the clock shows a countdown to the start time; once it starts, the clock runs against whichever team is on the clock.

Use the search bar or the position filter to narrow the available-player list. The list updates live as other teams pick — anyone who gets taken disappears within a second. If you want to compare a couple of players before you pull the trigger, this is the moment.

Click the player you want to draft. A confirmation dialog opens with the player's name, position, contract details, and any warnings (over-cap, position-limit conflict). Take a second to read the warnings before you confirm.

Press Confirm Pick. The pick is written to the database, broadcast to every other team in the room, and added to your roster immediately. The clock advances to the next team without you needing to do anything else.

If you miss your window — your clock hits zero before you confirm — the autopick feature takes over. It reads your draft queue and selects the highest-ranked player still available. If your queue is empty, the system picks the best player available by the league's ranking. See Draft Queue and Autopick to pre-load your queue before the draft.

The round transitions are automatic — when the last team in a round finishes their pick, the order reverses and the next round starts. Snake order means your second-round pick comes much sooner than your second pick in a linear draft, so plan your queue accordingly: if you have the last pick of round 1, you also have the first pick of round 2 (back-to-back picks at the turn).

If you need to step away mid-draft, your queue keeps working — set up two or three rounds of picks in advance and the autopick will fill them while you're gone.