Mastering Salary Cap Drafts: Part 6, Reading Your League

Note: This series is designed to take salary cap drafters of any ability and refine their skills to that of a seasoned veteran. The articles will go from basic concepts to the most advanced salary cap draft theories. Each article is designed to build on the previous articles in the series. For best results, read each article before proceeding to the concepts in the next article.

At this stage, you are no longer learning concrete things you can do to get better. Instead, you are learning how to layer subjective analysis over your concrete skills to push your edge a little bit more. So when you read this article, you should do so with that important factor in mind. Nothing you are learning now is an exact science, but the longer you draft the more these things will stand out if you are looking for them, and the more reliable your interpretation of them will become. Even if that only helps you at one or two critical moments in your salary cap draft, it will have been worth it.

The Psychology of Tells

A lot of people believe that observing tells is something you’re born with or something you have an instinct for. That isn’t necessarily the case. Learning to pick up tells is about nothing more than studying human behavior. Anyone can do it with enough practice and a few lessons from someone who knows what they’re talking about.

The great Mike Caro of poker fame wrote a whole book on Poker Tells detailing the things to look for that give away the strength of an opponent’s hand. Many of these lessons are directly relatable to a salary cap draft room. As he noted, there are thousands of little tells you can pick out to give you a clue as to what is in a person’s head, but they are too numerous to list. Instead, he boiled everything down to one simple idea: “Players are either acting, or they aren’t. If they are acting, then decide what they want you to do and disappoint them.”

Whether it’s a live draft or an online one doesn't matter. All it takes is paying attention to start to learn to predict human behavior. However, there are two things to remember about tells before you proceed. The first is that some tells can cut both ways. Without proper context, you won’t always know which way to interpret the tell, so the context clues are critical for your read. The second is that you must look at a person’s actions after you put a read on them to determine if you were right or not. If you don’t remember this critical step, you will never know if you are reading people correctly and will never get any better.

4 Common Tells

As Caro says in his book about tells, there are too many to list because human behavior is a complex tapestry of actions and reactions to the surrounding environment. So never forget that any tell is subject to whatever is happening around that person at that moment. However, some basic tells are fairly common and are good for you to start with.

Change in Behavior

When a drafter is loud and talkative but suddenly quiets down when you nominate Kyle Pitts, that should tip you off that something is going on. It is the responsibility of the person in the room to determine how to use this tell, what it may mean, and if it matters. But the change in behavior tell is one of the more reliable ones out there. When a drafter is quiet and not bidding but suddenly says “$35” as the bidding slows down on Aaron Jones, your radar should be blaring in your head. The problem is that most drafters aren’t paying attention to who is doing what in the room. You have to get in the habit of watching what people are doing to sense the change. Once you start doing it, it becomes second nature, but it takes a little time to learn.

Staring You Down

Your opponents’ gaze is something you should always note in your rubric of what is happening. Aggressive players will try to intimidate you by staring at you while the bidding is happening because they want a player. Even-tempered, calculated players will often stare at the wall or in the other direction when they’re in a bidding war with you. That doesn’t mean they are meek or submissive, it means they are confident in what they’re doing, and you are just part of the equation they’re using to determine whether to bid or not. Again, this tell can cut both ways, so make sure you know the context. But rest assured, it is an important part of knowing your opponent when you know if the way they are looking is typical or unusual.

Bid Timing

This one isn’t a physical tell involving behavior, but it is equally important and is one of the more important tells when doing an online salary cap draft. Pay attention to the bid patterns of the other managers. Do they always bid quickly? Do they wait until there are two seconds on the bid clock, no matter what? Do they bid right away when they want the player but take longer when they are price-enforcing? The speed at which someone registers a bid is important, and you have to decide how it is important. You’ll want to combine this tell with watching for a Change in Behavior (see above) to get a read that is even more dialed in. Does someone always bid quickly but then slow down when they are about to hit their limit? That information is incredibly valuable to have, so make a few notes about manager tendencies as the draft evolves, and it will pay dividends when salary caps get small.

Past Behavior

Reading people doesn’t always have to be about picking up a physical tell in the moment. The best way to predict future behavior is by tracking past behavior. That can apply year to year if you are in a league with the same people, but it can also apply to what people do as the draft goes on. If you notice Manager X stares you down when they want a player, you can use that on a future player to squeeze more dollars from them. Or maybe you notice Manager Y intently stares at their computer screen, scrolling their mouse when involved in a bid for a player they eventually buy for over the market price. Once you see that, you can start to dial in the reliability of bidding that player up when they stare a hole through their monitor. You could list endless examples of this, but the concept is simple: Pay attention to past actions and use them as the best indicator of what they will do in the future.

5 Types of Drafters

One of the easiest ways to read your league is learning the types of drafters you’ll typically see in salary cap drafts. Judging a book by its cover is a bad thing in real life, but in salary cap drafting, you can gain useful information from judging people based on appearance or an archetype of typical drafters. Like any tell, you aren’t always correct, but this is a strong starting point to learning people’s tendencies if you can put your opponents in different categories before you start.

The ABC Drafter

This drafter is always going to do things predictably. Their plays are right up the middle, they use a set of values that gives them a hard point telling them when to bid and when to stop, and typically you can tell exactly what they’re doing. They’ll nominate players they want, bid on players they want, and conversely, they won’t nominate or bid on players they don’t want. This is the best opponent to go up against in a salary cap draft.

The One Who Waits

Waiting is generally a good trait in a salary cap drafter but waiting too long is the hallmark of this type of drafter. They always have too much money and sometimes even complain about other managers getting good deals even though they have plenty of money to bid. Aiming nominations at this person may not work, and attempting to outbid them when they finally decide they want a player can be fruitless.

The Sloppy Drafter

This person often shows up late, has a magazine for reference, or forgets key things they need for the draft. (“Hey, what’s the cap again for this league?”) As the draft goes on, this player is unpredictable and lacks a plan. Be cautious trying to pull any moves on this drafter, as it can easily backfire. They won’t act rationally or how you think they should, so it’s better to stay away.

The Expert

This drafter walks into the room with a laptop bag and has planned for all eventualities, down to the drinks they’ll need during the draft. They are prepared, every pen and power cord is in place in their bag, and they have computer programs and cheat sheets all over the place. This person isn’t the one you want to tangle with.

The One Who Can’t Pass Up a Deal

Some drafters get into a salary cap draft, and while they are prepared and generally know player values, they sometimes lack a coherent attack vector for the draft. These drafters drift aimlessly through the draft and snatch up deals when they see them because they don’t know what else to do. Often these drafters will end up with extremely deep teams, but their teams will lack elite talent and upside. You should watch these players and let them fill up their rosters with mediocre talent.

There are plenty of other types of drafters in a salary cap room, but these are a few of the main ones. Don’t lean into incomplete information with these drafter archetypes. Take a few rounds and dial in your reads but use these starting points to give you a solid spot from which to begin.

Conclusion

The main thing to remember when trying to read people is that the total picture matters, not each individual thing. The drafter's experience, current roster, personality, past actions, and observable behavior all come together to help you read someone and predict what they will do. You must always juxtapose any read against the context of the situation and what other information you have about them. Reading people isn’t easy, but it is a skill you can learn that pays off in a salary cap draft room.