What is a snake draft? How the order works, round by round

A snake draft is a draft where the order reverses every round. The manager who picks first in round one picks last in round two, then first again in round three. It is the default in almost every fantasy football, baseball, basketball and hockey league, and for good reason: it spreads the advantage of an early pick across the whole draft.

How the snake order works

Take a 10-team league. In round one the order runs slot 1 to slot 10. In round two it runs 10 to 1, so the manager in slot 10 picks twice in a row: pick 10 and pick 11. In round three it flips back to 1 to 10, and slot 1 gets back-to-back picks 20 and 21.

Here are the overall pick numbers for the first four rounds. Read across a row for the order, or down a column to see one manager’s picks.

Draw a line through picks 1, 2, 3 and onward and it zigzags down the board, which is where the name comes from. You can build this grid for any league size, with names, using the free snake draft order generator.

Snake draft vs linear draft

A linear draft (some sites call it a standard or straight draft) keeps the same order every round. Slot 1 picks first in round one, round two and every round after.

Compare the two tables. In a linear draft, slot 1 makes picks 1, 11, 21 and 31: the best player available in every single round. Slot 10 makes picks 10, 20, 30 and 40, always the last choice. That gap compounds over 15 rounds, which is why almost nobody runs a linear draft for a whole fantasy league.

Linear still has its uses. For a one-round draft, like picking draft slots or choosing a single prize, the order of a linear and a snake draft is identical. It also suits drafts where the items are roughly equal and order is a formality, like an office draft of desserts or movie nights.

How long you wait between picks, from every slot

The trade-off of a snake draft is the wait. From slot s in an n-team league, after an odd round you wait 2 × (n − s) picks for your next turn, and after an even round you wait 2 × (s − 1). The two always add up to 2 × (n − 1), so every slot waits the same amount across a pair of rounds. What changes is how that wait is split.

The ends of the snake get the extremes. Slot 1 and slot 10 wait 18 picks, then pick twice in a row. The middle slots wait about 8 to 10 picks every time. That shapes strategy:

• At the turn (first or last slot), you pick in pairs. You can take two players at the same position before anyone else reacts, or grab the last two of a tier. The cost is that a whole run can happen while you wait 18 picks.
• In the middle, you never wait long and never get a pair. You react to runs rather than starting them, and you rarely see the last player of a tier fall to you.
• Before a long wait, take the position that is about to dry up. If you are on the turn and four quarterbacks are left in the top tier, assume none will be there in 18 picks.

Is the first pick still the best spot?

Usually, but by less than people think. In a snake draft, slot 1 gets the top player and then picks 20th and 21st overall in a 10-team league. Slot 10 gets the 10th-best player and the 11th. Whether the first pick wins depends on how steep the drop is after the top few names. When there is one clear best player, slot 1 is worth having. When the top five are close, a late pick that gets two of the next tier can be just as good.

That is why the way you set the order matters as much as the format. If your league argues about it every year, we collected 12 ways to set a fantasy draft order, from a live random draw to a draft for draft slots.

What about third-round reversal?

Third-round reversal (3RR) is a snake draft with one extra flip. Rounds one and two run as normal, then round three runs in the same direction as round two instead of reversing again. After that it snakes as usual. The effect: the manager who picked last in round one picks first in rounds two and three, which gives late first-round slots more compensation.

It caught on in fantasy football leagues where one or two players are far better than the rest, so the first pick felt too strong even in a snake. It is a reasonable fix for that problem, but it is a niche rule. LiveDraft-It does not run third-round reversal; it runs standard snake and linear orders. If your league needs 3RR, our FanDraft comparison says which tool has it.

Keeping track on draft night

A snake draft is easy to explain and easy to lose track of in round nine. On paper, the standard fix is a big board on the wall with a column per manager and a sticker per pick. Plenty of leagues still love the ritual, and we have a free printable draft board if you want one without buying anything.

A live board does the bookkeeping. In a LiveDraft-It room the board fills in as each pick is made, the clock tells everyone whose turn it is, and an on-deck strip shows who picks next and how many picks until you are up, so nobody has to count down the snake by hand. Put it on the TV and the wall board becomes optional.