Daily Fantasy Baseball Snake Draft Strategy

Daily Fantasy Baseball Snake Draft Strategy
By Derek of RotoPicks.com

Before we get into the strategy of a snake draft, let's start with the basics of a snake draft. This type of daily fantasy league is very similar to the format of a year-long league only the scoring period only lasts for one day rather than the whole season. A snake draft (aka: Serpentine Draft) is a traditional style draft where the draft order is randomly selected by the system and you take turns picking players. These drafts will usually have anywhere between 2-8 players. "Snakes" are different from salary cap leagues because the same player cannot be drafted twice. Much like a yearly draft, an 8 person draft order would go in order from players 1 to 8 in round one and then reverse order from 8 to 1 in round two, with the order repeating itself until all rosters are full.

When it comes to snakes, there is a lot more strategy involved than you would think, especially in head to head snakes. While your draft position is a bit of luck, you can still use strategy to help you get the upper hand on your opponent. Before you enter a snake, the best thing to do is to research your options at each position and find out who the top choices are at each position, especially the pitchers. If you have time, make a quick list of players that you want to make sure to draft, this will help you remember them when it's your turn to draft and the clock is ticking.

Once you have done your research and the draft has started, it is time to start using a little bit of strategy. Your main goal is to draft all of your top picks at each position while simultaneously blocking your opponent from taking good players.

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When you start drafting, you can get a general idea of what your opponent is going to deem most important. If he starts choosing hitters right off the bat, it is a perfect opportunity for you to stack up on the best pitchers and vice versa. However, if there are a bunch of good pitching options that day, then you might want to wait on drafting pitchers early on because you can always wait and get a few good pitchers late in the draft. If this is the case, then you want to focus on getting the best hitters at their respective position. The key here is in the research that you did before the draft started. If you can identify which positions have a lot of good options and which ones don't, you can use that to your advantage. Example: On a day where there's only a handful of teams playing and Troy Tulowitzki is the only good SS on the board, you'll want to bump him up on your list of players otherwise you'll get stuck with a weak player in that position, giving your opponent a huge advantage.

For another example, let's say that there aren't that many games that night and there are only 3 pitchers that you think you will do well. If this is the case, your goal should be to get the best pitchers available and to do this you will have to use your early round draft picks on pitchers.

Another way that you can get an advantage in snake drafts is to play a little defense by blocking your opponent from taking certain players. Say that you are in a snake and you have already drafted a first baseman but your opponent hasn't drafted one yet. Take a look at the options for first base and if there is a guy that you have projected to have a kick ass day, you can draft that guy and block your opponent from taking him. This applies to all positions and a really good strategy to use when there are only a couple of options for a certain position. You can even draft a player to your reserve roster that you know you aren't going to use, just to keep your opponent from getting him. While it won't help your score directly, it can lower your opponents score and prevent you from getting scorched by a guy that you'd have liked to have active but didn't have room for.

The next time you decide to join a snake draft, don't go into it blind and just randomly select players. Remember to do your research before hand and get a list of your favorite players at every position. I highly recommend putting these players in queue as well, so you're not scrambling against the clock, risking being timed out and the system making a choice for you.

Once the draft starts, start selecting players from positions that don't have very many good options available to ensure that you are good at every position. Also remember to check your opponent's roster and use it against him by playing defense. If you notice that he hasn't selected all of his pitchers and there is only one good pitcher left on the board, go ahead and draft him so that your opponent can't. It can frustrate him and possibly force him into making poor choices. This is a great advantage!

Becoming a winning daily fantasy MLB player takes some practice, but these little tips can help you win more often than not.

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