Captains Draft for Dota 2 In-House Lobbies

Captains Draft (CD) is a Dota 2 game mode where each team's captain picks and bans heroes from a limited, randomly generated pool of around 27 heroes instead of the full roster. It differs from Captains Mode, which uses every available hero and a longer ban sequence. The small rotating pool forces captains to draft creatively rather than defaulting to meta picks. The same term also describes drafting players: two captains taking turns to build teams for an in-house lobby, which is what this tool runs.

A snake order draft reverses the picking direction each round so neither captain gets a permanent advantage. On this site the order is A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A: captain A picks first, captain B picks twice, then it snakes back. Because captain A gets the first pick but captain B gets two in a row, the total player quality evens out across both teams. It is the standard format for fantasy drafts and in-house player drafts.

In an in-house captain draft, two players are named captains and take turns picking the remaining eight players onto their teams. On DOTA DRAFT, captains pick in snake order (A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A) with a 30-second timer per pick, and each player's rank, best roles, and win rate are shown to inform the choice. Once all picks are made, the tool displays both rosters with assigned positions 1-5 and a balance score, ready to copy into your Dota 2 lobby.

Yes, DOTA DRAFT is completely free. There is no download, no installation, and no payment for any of the six team-making modes, including Captain Draft, Auto Balance, and Role Shuffle. It runs in any modern browser on desktop or mobile. The tool is built and maintained by Rivals Gaming (rivalsapp.com).

No account is needed for the basic modes. You can open the site, add 10 player names, and start a captain draft immediately. Pasting Steam IDs is optional — it enriches the draft with each player's rank medal, role comfort, and win rate pulled from OpenDota, but the draft works fine with plain names.

Each pick has a 30-second timer. When a captain selects a player, the timer resets to 30 seconds for the next pick. If the timer expires before the captain chooses, the tool automatically picks a random player from the remaining pool, so a slow or absent captain can never stall the draft. Auto-picks use a seeded random generator, meaning the same draft seed always produces the same fallback picks.

Yes. The tool is designed around a full 10-player, 5v5 lobby, but the draft simply continues until the player pool is empty, so it works for smaller games too — for example, 8 players for a 4v4. Add however many players you have, pick two captains, and the snake order runs until everyone is placed on a team.

You choose how captains are selected, in one of three ways: pick them manually (common when two known shot-callers lead), spin the random wheel for a fair and entertaining selection, or auto-select the two highest-MMR players in the pool. The two captains are placed on opposite teams before the snake-order picking begins.

The balance score is a percentage that measures how evenly matched the two drafted teams are, based on each player's rank tier, win rate, and recent performance. A score of 85% or higher indicates a fair game. Captain drafts do not always hit that mark — captains are free to pick however they like — but the score tells your lobby exactly how lopsided the result is before the game starts.

Player data comes from OpenDota and the Steam API. When you add a player by Steam ID, the tool fetches their rank medal (Herald through Immortal), most-played positions, win rate, and recent match history. Captains see this data during the draft. If a player has a private profile or you only enter a name, the draft still works — there is just no stat card for that player.

Captain A picks first, but captain B immediately picks twice in a row, so the first-pick advantage evens out. The full snake order on DOTA DRAFT is A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A: after captain B's double pick, captain A picks twice, and the sequence snakes back until all eight remaining players are drafted. The captains themselves are decided before the draft starts — manually, by random wheel, or by highest MMR.

A captains draft on DOTA DRAFT takes at most four minutes of picking: after the two captains are set, eight players remain, and each pick has a 30-second timer, so eight picks cap out at 240 seconds. Most drafts finish faster because captains rarely use the full timer, and an expired timer triggers an instant auto-pick. Adding players and choosing captains adds a minute or two on top, so a lobby goes from ten names to two teams in around five minutes.

Captains Draft uses a small random pool of about 27 heroes with a short ban phase, while Captains Mode gives both captains the full Dota 2 hero roster and a much longer ban sequence — seven bans per team in recent patches. Captains Mode is the standard for professional matches; Captains Draft forces improvisation because the pool changes every game. This site borrows the name for drafting players, not heroes: two captains picking teams for an in-house lobby.

Email [email protected] — it is read by people who run drafts, not by a ticket robot. Rule disputes, pick-order questions, tournament brackets, bug reports, or a lobby that cannot agree on anything all count as support here. Every email link on this site pre-fills the subject line, so we know exactly what you need before you finish typing.