WannabeGM Hockey League
Draft Lotto
A weighted, capped random draw that decides where the pay-league GMs land in next season's draft order — reward finishing just short, punish a repeat pay-league champ, and keep some real chaos in the mix.
How the odds work
- Non-pay GMs keep their exact finish from last season as next season's draft slot. No lottery, no change.
- Pay-league GMs each contribute their own finish position as a slot up for grabs — only those slots get reshuffled, and only among the pay-league group.
- Weight = (Total GMs − finish + 2). A 2nd-place finish starts at the top of the field; weight tapers down toward last.
- Bonus balls: +30 weight for finishing 2nd, +15 for finishing 3rd — tuned so, among this year's contested field, the 2nd-place finisher lands the top pick close to (but just under) half the time, with 3rd place a strong runner-up rather than a distant third choice.
- Champion penalty: a pay-league GM who wins the whole league gets weight forced down to 1 — worse odds than dead last.
- ±3 cap: rank the contested slots themselves best-to-worst (this year that's #2, #3, #8, #9, #12, #15 → positions 1st through 6th among themselves). Nobody can land more than 3 of those positions better or worse than where their own finish sits in that ranking — not 3 raw slot numbers, which would unfairly wall off anyone whose slot isn't numerically close to the top.
- Draw order vs. reveal order: the actual weighted math always runs top slot first, worst slot last — that's what determines the odds. But when you're showing it to the room, picks are revealed worst-to-best instead, so the drama builds toward the top pick at the end. The math doesn't change, only the order you find out about it.
1 · Set the field
| GM | Pay league | Finish |
|---|
2 · Homepage preview
Matches the "League Draft Order Prep" table format on the site homepage — this is what should be posted there before the lottery runs. Updates live as you edit the field above.
3 · Run & reveal
Locking in computes the full result instantly and privately — nothing is shown yet. Once locked, reveal picks one at a time, worst slot first, for the room.