Live bidding guide for 9-cat and 8-cat auctions, head-to-head or roto, built on 2026-27 season projections. Log each sale and the board re-prices everyone: your max bid is the highest price at which a player still raises your chance of beating the other teams more than keeping the money would.
Projections updated 13 Oct 2026. News adjustments include injury updates, role changes, coaches' comments, etc.
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| Log | Player | Max bid | Exp. $ | Bargain | Gain | Avg $ | Board |
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For a player in your plan, hold your bids until the clock is nearly out. Every bid resets the clock (10 seconds on Yahoo), so waiting never costs you the player. A price that creeps up slowly tends to pull in fewer bidders than a flurry of early bids. Keep going up to the board's limit, one dollar at a time.
When the board says "Let him go · worth $X to you", you can join the bidding up to $X to make the room pay more. If you get stuck with him, you've paid no more than he's worth to you. Stop at $X. To drain budgets on purpose, the Nominate next list is the better tool.
Your limit is the price where buying him stops beating the best plan without him. Above it, winning the bidding war makes your team worse, however good the player. When he goes past it, the board re-plans around the money you kept, and that plan is better.
When it's just you and one other team bidding $1 at a time, you get him whenever they stop below your limit, at one dollar more than their last bid. The order of bids only matters if their limit is exactly the same as yours: then whoever bids that number first gets him. Don't jump $2 to make sure that's you. Your limit is your break-even price, so winning him there gains you almost nothing, and the jump costs you an extra $1 every time they would have stopped a dollar or two short of it. Just keep bidding at $1 increments.
Every category counts, including the ones a player hurts. A star who helps you in five categories but costs you heavily in three is worth less than his name suggests, and a cheaper player with no real weak spots can be worth more than he sells for. Percentages count by volume: a .640 free-throw shooter taking eight a game hurts far more than one taking two.
Many big names have a max bid well below their expected price. That doesn't mean they're bad players. Rooms pay a premium for stars, while mid-priced players often sell for less than they add to a team, so at the star's usual price your money buys more spread across several of them. Head-to-head adds to this: a huge lead in one category still only wins you that category each week, so value concentrated in one player counts for less. Jokic is the exception: he helps in nearly every category and nothing cheaper replaces him, so his max bid sits above his price.
Your team changes the numbers. Max bids update after every sale, so a player who fills a gap on your roster can climb above his price. Tap Why next to any player for his own breakdown.
The board plans the best set of real players your remaining money could still buy (each at his expected price plus the $1 it takes to outbid the room). A player's max bid is the highest price where buying him plus the best plan for what is left still beats the best plan without him. It respects the $1-per-empty-slot rule. The plan treats slots you haven't filled yet as uncertain (you won't land every target), and gives money it leaves unspent half its market value, so max bids move smoothly with price. Each max bid is averaged over six price scenarios for the other players, drawn from how mock rooms actually paid around each expected price; the player on the block gets his straight away and the list fills in over a few seconds, shown faded until it does.
A price curve maps each player's Yahoo average auction value to what mock rooms actually pay: $1 players stay near $1, players Yahoo prices at $2–15 go well above it, and stars sell near it. Star prices change only a little with team count (about 5% per two extra teams); money left over or short lands mostly on the cheaper players. Every sale you log re-prices the rest, and the board learns this room's habits as it goes (see Room habits). No expected price goes above what the richest other team can bid, plus $1. That's known exactly once every sale has a buyer; otherwise the board estimates it from the other teams' spare money (in the saved rooms the richest team held up to about three times the average). It matters when stars are left until late and the room has spent most of its money.
The best roster still reachable: your players, the named targets your money can buy, and $1 leftovers for any slots it fills at the end. Each target is budgeted at his expected price plus $1 (at least $2), since you have to outbid the room. Players you star (★) are always in it: the board budgets for them the same way and builds the rest of the plan, and every other max bid, around them. If a starred player's max bid is below his expected price (shown in amber), the board values him below what he usually goes for: stop at his max bid, and the plan rebuilds if he goes elsewhere. "Up to" is the most each is worth to you right now. It is rebuilt after every sale. The category chances at the top assume you land it.
Three phases. Drain budgets: nominate players the room pays more for than they are worth to you, so other teams spend their money. Buy targets: once the room is down to about $15 spare per team or 3 open slots per team, put your cheapest plan targets up yourself while few teams can outbid you. In simulated auctions, nominating this way beat random nominations by about 3.7 standings points, and this switch point beat switching earlier or never. $1 endgame: when about $1 is all you can bid, each $1 pickup gets an outbid risk and a call. From the saved rooms' late sales, each other team that can still bid $2+ joins in on a player the room prices at $1 about 1 time in 10, at $3 about 3 in 10 and at $7 about half the time, and the players the room values most get nominated first. So the board says nominate now for pickups nobody will fight you for, and hold the contested ones until the teams with money fill up or spend it. While your best pickups are worth holding, it suggests draining the last money with a player the room will almost surely bid on.
These settings in Setup change how players are valued. Active and bench slots, lineups and the games cap sit under More league settings. The defaults are Yahoo, roto, 9-cat, 10 active and 3 bench slots, daily lineups and no games cap.
Prices follow the money left in the room after every sale. On top of that the board learns two habits from this room's own sales: whether it pays over or under for stars (players expected at $15 and up), and whether it pays over or under for the board's bargain players (worth $3+ more to you than their price at the start). Each is held back until a few such players have sold. The Price level tile shows them once they move prices by 3% or more.
How many more categories you'd expect to win if you buy him at his expected price and spend the rest of your money as the plan would, compared with the best plan without him. It adds up your chance of beating each other team in all nine categories, so +0.10 means a tenth of a category more against each opponent: about one standings point in a 12-team league (0.10 × 11 other teams). The coloured cells split it by category, in percentage points: green where he helps, red where you give something up to afford him (often the players the plan would have bought instead). Gain falls as his price rises, and your max bid is the price where it reaches zero; in the endgame the board uses his gain at $1 to rank pickups.
Once every sale has a buyer, the board scores you against the real teams (each team's players plus what its money typically buys) instead of a typical team; in simulated auctions that added about 0.8 standings points per auction. The Teams panel then shows projected standings with your biggest threats. Finished auctions are saved to your own private history on this board (or use Save to history), and each player's expected price learns from what he went for. Click Delete history twice to remove every saved auction and what the board learned from them. Review auction shows where you stand and, at the end, what you paid against the board's limit at the time.
Prices are fitted on Yahoo mock auctions, mostly 12-team; pricing for other team counts rests on less evidence. Opponents' budgets are tracked only when you log a buyer on every sale. Your log stays in this browser only; Copy log puts every sale, in order, on your clipboard. The player list is the top 300 by projected value (some lower-ranked players by initial, e.g. A. Black); anyone else can still be logged by typing his full name.