There are some widespread misconceptions about why fantasy draft cheat sheets are useful, despite their increasingly common usage:

• People think the multitude of collected numbers is the key feature.  (In fact, there’s disagreement about which numbers you should be using.)

• They assume that the sheet creator is an expert who made the rankings. 

• They buy into ongoing lore that positional rankings make them “league-winning”.

In fact, the most important feature of VBD tools is the method they use to prioritize players.  Users should first learn the basic underlying methodology of value-based drafting.

The Purpose of a Value-Based Drafting Tool

Misconception: VBD cheatsheets (like BeerSheets or TapThatDraft) are rankings produced by the creator.  (False!)

Actuality: VBD cheat sheets use other people’s rankings.  The primary purpose of a VBD tool is to re-order the rankings, i.e. to adapt player projections into a cheat sheet for your specific league settings. 

This re-ranking can be crucial, because a fantasy experts’ list might apply to just one type of league.  (“a 12-team league with 0.5 PPR, 1QB spot, 2RB spots, etc….”)  No single set of rankings can address the variation in league situations. 

Value based drafting cheat sheets are meant to help you adapt. Actually a VBD tool can solve 3 things at once:

1. It will calculate player point expectations for your specific league scoring settings.  This is naturally important. Certain players become more valuable under certain settings.  

2. It guides what positions to prioritize during the draft.  Again, normal rankings aren’t naturally suited for this.  They’re better at comparing players of the same position, but they’re not optimal at prioritizing between positions. And your draft strategy hinges on assessing the tradeoffs in positional scarcity.  That will change depending on the team count and roster construction of your league. 

3. The tool is more than just qualitative. It will actually quantify the priority of one player over another, across positions.  Again, plain rankings aren’t suited for this.  They can’t recommend a reasonable auction price, unless they know about your league.  But VBD tools do suggest numerical valuation guidelines, for your draft decisions.

Upshot: Value Based Drafting tools give a re-interpretation of other people’s rankings, to direct you with guidance that is tailored for your league/ roster / scoring settings.

How Value-Based Draft Tools Work

I’ve assembled additional primers for you to read about:

• baseline selection,

• the theory of auction pricing,

• and the additional challenges of snake drafts.

In short, Value-Based Drafting is built on a couple theoretical assumptions:

1. that analysts can produce reasonable numerical forecasts of player production, to predict season scoring,

2. and that we can rationally estimate numerical player draft values, which allow us to optimize our rosters.

Drawbacks to Remember About Value-based Drafting

While VBD can usefully optimize your draft strategy, there are several weaknesses you should always bear in mind, so you don’t follow it blindly:

• Projections are faulty approximations. Few sources provide them, compared to the large number of sources that provide rankings. (Remember, projections are not rankings. Projections refers to the underlying forecasts of yards, TDs, receptions, etc.)  As with everything in fantasy football, projections are just best guesses.

• Projections don’t usually account for a particular player’s range of possible outcomes. Especially with bench construction, it can be more important to consider a player’s potential upside.  But typical projections don’t do that for us, because they’re mean to describe the “average likely outcome”. 

• And VBD tools assume somewhat predictable league behavior.  But it’s impossible to predict if your league mates will pick players out of turn, or if your league treats tends to overvalue a certain position, or how strongly they will prioritize their starting rosters overachieving a strong bench of back-ups.

Then What is Best Practice for Drafting with VBD Cheat Sheets?

As outlined above, VBD tools can generate a the numerical prioritization of players across positions, for your specific league size, roster composition, and scoring settings.  This makes it a useful guideline to assist your own preferences, even though you will likely deviate from following it strictly. 

For a more instructive step-by-step overview about how to approach your draft, read more here.