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How does the draft timer work?
How does the draft timer work?

Learn about the soft draft timer and where the CPU auto picks from

Sleeper HQ avatar
Written by Sleeper HQ
Updated over a week ago

First off, your league's draft will never begin until the commissioner selects "Begin Draft". Even if your draft is scheduled for 7 p.m. it will never start and nobody will be able to make a pick.

This is intentional as too many times we've had to wait for a few stragglers to log on or wait for someone to arrive with the pizza.

CPU Auto Pick

Only the commissioner can set the rest of the league to auto-pick. Individual teams do not have that option, so the draft timer will always run out and then make a selection.

For those who don't want to wait the full time, the commissioner can press on the current tile and select "Force CPU Auto Pick". This will draft according to that team's queue if they have one set up. It will also take into consideration what positions the team needs, and it will take one of the higher-ranked players available.

Soft Draft Timer

If the commissioner has auto picked turned off, and a team runs out of time to make their pick, you'll find that nothing will happen. We call this our soft draft timer.

This option is often used mostly as a pause overnight. Leagues won't have to worry about auto picks happening overnight. Just turn auto pick off and teams will be able to make picks throughout the night, but won't be penalized if they run out of time.

Pausing the Draft

The commissioner can pause the draft at any time for however long they'd like, for whatever reason.

When the draft is manually paused, nobody is able to make any picks. Once the draft is resumed, the team that was on the clock has the timer reset.

Slow Draft Auto-Pause

As requested, we now support the option to pause the draft timer at specified times.

Users can still make draft selections during this time, but the timer will not go down. It will reset for any team that makes a pick, and will start ticking down again at the end of the specified time.

Changing Time Per Pick

A common reason the draft is paused is so that the commissioner can update the time per pick. They can do this at any point in the draft.

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