How to play

Two bidders, ten lots, a hundred million each. You buy five players; so does your opponent; then the two rosters play and the scoreline is the whole point. A game takes about five minutes.

The shape of a sale

Every slot must be filled, which is the constraint the whole game turns on. You cannot spend ninety on one superstar and field four empty positions — the auction reserves what you still need, so the most you can bid is always your budget minus a minimum for each remaining hole.

Calling a lot

Bidders take turns calling lots. When it is your turn you choose a position, not a player. The room then brings out somebody who can play it.

This is the rule that makes the game what it is. You cannot simply nominate the best player alive and buy him; you say "I want a centre" and find out who walks out. It keeps a sale unpredictable and it makes calling a lot a real decision: naming the position you are weakest at means bidding against an opponent who knows you need it.

Bidding

The lot opens at $1M held by whoever called it. The other bidder can raise or concede. Any bid resets the clock to ten seconds; when it runs out, the player is sold at the standing price.

Raises follow a ladder that scales with the price, the way a real saleroom does — a million at a time near the bottom, never a million at a time near the top.

You can override the ladder and jump the price deliberately — $1M, $5M, $10M or $25M — which is how you shut somebody out of a player you have decided you are having.

From the keyboard

B bids, C concedes, and 1 to 4 set the raise. Under a ten-second clock, a keystroke beats moving a mouse.

Where he plays is decided after you have won him

When the hammer falls you choose which of your open slots the player fills. Not before — after.

Deciding position and price at the same time asks a bidder to solve two problems while a clock runs, and only one of them is urgent. Separating them also means the position picker can show you what he would actually rate in each slot, so the choice between playing a guard out of position and leaving a hole is a comparison rather than a guess.

A player at his natural position gets +3 to his rating, and +1 at a secondary position he genuinely played. Out of position he simply gets neither.

The estimate

Every lot carries a price band — what the room reckons he fetches, given who is still available. Beating it is the game. A bidder holding a hundred million and five slots has no natural sense of whether twelve for an 87 is a steal or a disaster, and the estimate is the answer to that.

Budget per remaining slot is shown alongside it. That is what you can average if you spend evenly, so a price above it is a price you are choosing to make up somewhere else.

Chemistry

Five good players are not automatically a good team. Chemistry judges the shape of your roster: whether anybody can create a shot, whether you have shooting, whether somebody protects the rim, whether your usage adds up to a functioning offence, and how far apart in era your five are.

Crucially it is judged against the pool you are bidding from, not against a fixed ideal. On the all-time scale every roster is full of high-usage scorers from wildly different decades, so measuring that against a modern team would hand everybody the same penalty and tell you nothing. The bar moves with the field.

The match

When the last slot is filled, the two rosters play. The simulation is driven by the ratings you bought and the chemistry you assembled, and it produces a real scoreline: four quarters, a box score for all ten players, and a card you can send to the person you just beat.

The result is fixed once it is played. Refreshing will not deal you a new one.

Ways to play

• Against the computer. Four difficulties. It never gets extra money — only better judgement.
• Two players, one device. Take the paddle in turns and hand it over when a lot closes.
• Someone else, somewhere else. Send a six-character room code to a friend, or take whoever the floor is holding.
• League of eight. Coming.

Choosing the field

This season rates every player on what he is doing right now. All-time opens it to every era, each player at his peak. Then pick how deep the pool goes — the top 60 is brutal, because only twelve complete teams exist in it and every hole you leave is one somebody else fills.