How to play

When you pick a player, you start the bidding with your own opening bid (at least $1 by default, never more than you can afford). You can only pick players you can actually fit on your roster. If nobody outbids you, you win the player at your opening bid.

Hosts can switch this off for a shared auction: the auction opens with no bid, anyone who can use the player may bid, and you may even nominate someone only your opponent needs.

Every bid must beat the current one by at least the minimum increment ($1 by default). Bids are whole game dollars. The host can also set a maximum bid.

If you're the high bidder you can't bid against yourself. Wait for your opponent to respond.

Each auction runs for 20 seconds by default (hosts can pick 5 to 120, or switch the clock off for untimed auctions). When it reaches zero, the high bidder wins the player.

A bid placed in the final 5 seconds resets the clock to 5 seconds, so nobody can snipe a player at the buzzer and the other side always gets a chance to answer.

Hosts can set this anywhere from 0 to 30 seconds. At 0 the clock simply runs out.

Press Pass to say you're out on this player. You can't bid on them again, and the current high bidder can't pass. Hosts may disable passing, but only for timed auctions: an untimed auction always allows it, or it could never end.

The auction ends immediately, without waiting for the clock, as soon as nobody left can outbid the leader: your opponent passed, can't afford a higher bid, or has no open roster slot that fits the player.

Both players start with $25 by default. Hosts can choose any amount up to $1,000, give the players different budgets as a handicap, or play with unlimited budgets.

With unlimited budgets nobody can run out of money, and value for money is judged against a standard reference budget instead of what you started with.

By default you must always keep the minimum opening bid ($1) for every other empty slot on your roster. That means one star can never eat your whole budget and leave you unable to fill the rest.

Hosts can turn the reserve off, or cap any single bid with a maximum bid.

The host picks a template such as Classic or Quick Match, or builds a custom roster of up to 24 slots. Both players get the same slots, so the game is always symmetrical.

A flex slot accepts several positions, and some players are eligible at more than one position (many baseball hitters list several). The game checks the whole roster, not each position on its own, so it will shuffle your players between slots if that lets a new one fit.

You can also move players between slots yourself during the draft, as long as every player on your roster still has a legal slot to sit in. Where someone sits matters: each slot carries its own weight in the final score, so keep your best players in the slots that count most.

Head coaches, managers and (in the NFL) whole team defenses can be drafted too. They have no individual stats, so their ratings are estimates built from the team's results and are labelled that way. Hosts can leave coaches out.

The wheel only lands on teams that still have at least one person that one of you could legally buy, so a spin never ends in a dead end. The server picks the result with a cryptographically secure random number, and the animation simply reveals it, so both screens show the same result at the same moment.

After the wheel stops, and before you nominate, you can spend a reroll to spin again. Each player gets 2 by default (hosts can set 0 to 10, or unlimited). A reroll avoids landing on the same team again whenever another team is available.

If either player drops offline during an auction, the clock freezes and the game announces who is missing. When everyone is back it resumes with the time that was left (never less than a few seconds). Spin and nominate timers are topped up too, so nobody loses a turn to a dropped connection. Hosts can switch this off before the game.

Your browser holds a private guest identity (a cookie, no account). Reopen the room link on the same device and browser and you drop straight back into your seat with everything intact. A different browser, a private window or cleared site data looks like a new person, and a full room won't let them in.

If the game hasn't heard from a player for about 20 seconds, they show as disconnected. Nothing is lost: they simply reappear on their next sign of life.

If the host has been gone for a minute, the other player can take over as host. If your opponent has been away for two minutes, you can end the game straight away instead of waiting.