Press "Enter" to skip to content

Snake Draft Ordering in SQL Server

Aaron Bertrand demands order:

I play fantasy football. To start each season, there is a draft, where players are randomly assigned draft order. We’ve started some seasons with a “snake” draft, to make the selection of players most fair and balanced. A snake draft works like this (a simple example with four players):

  • First pick in the first round picks last in the second round.
  • Second pick in the first round picks third in the second round.
  • Third pick in the first round picks second in the second round.
  • Last pick in the first round picks first in the second round.
  • Then, in the third round, it reverts to the original order: The first pick from the first round picks first again (giving them two picks back-to-back).

Read on to see how to implement this in T-SQL. I’m happy to report that I anticipated the answer, though Aaron notes a couple of issues that I didn’t catch in my “compile the code in my head” approach.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.