Fifty! Do I hear fifty-five? Going once, going twice...sold to the Owner in the ten gallon hat!

Nothing can prepare you for the intensity of an auction draft. It's no holes barred and not for the faint of Fantasy heart. For those of you brave enough to enter an auction draft, there should be one word that stands out in your mind: value.

Value is important in all forms of Fantasy drafting, but it is has a different meaning and prevalence in auction leagues. How you spend your cash will separate your championship team from everyone else's. Every dollar in an auction must be monitored. It's one of the few times that being a Scrooge is considered a good thing.

Not only must the players you really want be tracked, but every other player must be kept in check in order to see where each dollar is spent compared to your projected player values. In other words- you better be counting your pennies, because there is no credit card to bail you out of an auction draft.

"An auction draft is unlike anything you'll ever experience in Fantasy," said FF Times.com Scout Steve D.. "It's incredibly challenging, but it's also thrilling, consuming, and draining all wrapped up into four hours of chaos. You can prepare all you want, but you have to expect the unexpected because one wrong move can easily put your team under the bus."

Who You Get is Not as Important as What You Spend
In preparing for a Fantasy auction, the first step is to put a dollar value on every single Fantasy player you expect to be drafted. Therefore, if you are going into a 12-team league, where there are 16 roster spots, you must have a dollar value for 192 players. Not only that, but these dollar values must add up to the combined salary cap of each team. For example, most auction leagues have caps of either $100 or $200. Thus, if you are in a 12-team league at a $200 cap per team, your total values for all players combined should total $2400 (12 teams x $200).

The best way to do this is to take your cheat sheet rankings (see example above listing top10 players) and place dollar values next to every single player ranked. I know what you're thinking- that sounds like a lot of work. And you're right, it is. The payoff in the end, however, is ten times more valuable than you realize, because you will be able to track the exact value of each player throughout the course of the entire draft.

Will LT Make You Work OT?
Say you set the value of someone like RB-LaDainian Tomlinson (SD) at $88 in a $200 cap league, that's 44% of your salary cap. However, if during the auction you find that he is going for $70, then you know that you would be getting great value compared to the rest of the players you have ranked. In essence, you just saved yourself $18 to be spent on another player or two, thus changing your dollar values and allowing you more flexibility.

On the flipside, if LT starts going for $75-80, you know better than to join the festivities and stay clear, because at that point he would be overvalued. It would be a monumental mistake to overbid on an already high-priced player at the risk of draining your precious salary cap.

Monitor Trends & Set Market Values
This is always an important part to any type of drafting, but even more so in auction drafting. Once the draft gets rolling, it's of the utmost importance to quickly put each position's market value into perspective. This will allow you to adjust the way you bid going forward and adapt your strategy accordingly. But it's early on where not knowing how the market is going to play itself out that can hurt you the most.

That's exactly what happened in an expert auction league draft I participated in, where I had QB-Peyton Manning (IND) projected at $50. I thought I had a steal getting him at $35, but little did I know that a few picks later, QB-Carson Palmer would go for $20, setting a precedent for QBs going for much lower values than I had anticipated. Granted, I got the best QB in the league by a long shot, but I also paid for it.

I'm Calling the Cops
This leads to the next tip concerning Fantasy auctions- at some point in every Owner's draft (experts included), a partial mistake or error will be made. It might be as minor as overpaying for a player, or as major as ending up with a player you were trying to police (policing occurs when an Owner feels a player should be going for more than they currently are, so they bid up the player in hopes to drive up their price).

Needless to say, sometimes when you police a player, it could backfire and you will then be the Owner of a player you didn't really want in the first place. Therefore, understand that this will happen at least once and you must shake off the mistake and try even harder to find the next value.

On Sale! 30% Off
After developing your cheat rankings with players assigned to dollar values, create a new list with the same players, but with approximately 70% of their original dollar value listed next to them. This second list seems slightly unnecessary, but this list is where value is found. If you are confident in your values and you see a player, any player, going for much less than you anticipated, he should be an automatic grab.

Since value on the dollar is what you are seeking, it's not recommended to pass on a player going at almost a third of what you anticipated. At this point, you have just recuperated from whatever mistake you may have made and now have balanced out your value sheet.

As an example, in the aforementioned expert auction league draft, I had Javon Walker (DEN) valued at about $17 due to the PPR (pts per reception) scoring system we were using. When the bidding was only up to $16, I figured getting him for $17 would be a steal. And low and behold, I made up $7 from the earlier overbidding of Manning. In my eyes, I now only paid $43 for Manning, thus making that pick even more appealing. On top of that, I got Walker as my #2 WR to start weekly for me.

Strategies with Holes
When going into the draft, there are several strategies you can take. Some Owners like to target particular players. While this method can be fun, it could also prove to be expensive, especially if someone else has targeted that player and a bidding war breaks out. Another strategy is to draft two studs and then let the auction play itself out and find some fillers. That strategy is sound, but if one of those two studs goes down, and you spent over 70% of your cap on them, you will be in for a long season.

Strategies to Live By
While participating in an auction draft, I recommend doing two things:

First, watch at least two players at each position go off the board before you start to actively bid. That does not mean to ignore going after LT if he is the first player on the auction block, but if you have the patience to let the draft unfold a little, this will allow you to see how accurate your projected dollar valuations are compared to the actual market values that are being set at each position.

Second, be ready at any point to change your valuations. If for some reason, everyone in your league goes QB happy, be prepared to bid more for QBs than you expected and lower your values at other positions. Everyone participating in the league may be doing the same thing, and this will prevent you from overbidding at another position, such as RB, WR, or TE.

Other strategies that can help you dictate the draft are to nominate players you might not want, or bid on players you are not interested in. This will allow you to hide the players you may really be interested in, which can confuse and prevent other Owners from bidding you up when the actual players you are targeting are on the auction block. Again, this has some risk like policing, so be careful about getting stuck with a player you don't want.

Also, keep track of what other Owners have spent and where they stand in relation to the cap. If someone has little left in their cap, and has a similar need as you, you will probably be able to outbid them on the last remaining decent player at that position. This strategy is almost like tracking Owners' picks in a standard snake draft.

The Auction Experience
Sure this sounds like a lot of work and preparation, but it is truly worth it. If you've been playing Fantasy Football for years and have not tried an auction league, you really must give it a shot. It's such a different experience than snake drafting, and you truly have the opportunity to get the players you really want.

For those of you ready to take the plunge, I highly recommend going for it. Because once you draft auction style, Fantasy will never will be the same.