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: +25 weight for finishing 2nd, +10 for finishing 3rd, +1 for finishing anywhere else in the overall top 10 (4th through 10th) — the podium spots get the biggest boost toward the top pick, with a small consolation bump for the rest of the top 10 so it isn't a two-team race. 11th place and worse get no bonus at all, same as before.
- Champion penalty: a pay-league GM who wins the whole league gets weight forced down to 1 — worse odds than dead last.
- ±3 cap (±2 for a top-5 overall finish): 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 of those positions better or worse than where their own finish sits in that ranking — measured in ranking spots among the contested slots, not raw slot numbers, which would unfairly wall off anyone whose slot isn't numerically close to the top. The cap is 3 spots for a GM who finished 6th or worse overall, tightened to 2 spots for a GM who finished in the league's overall top 5.
- 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.