Snake Draft vs ABAB Order - Which Is Fairer for Teams

Updated 2026-07-13

What is the difference between a snake draft and an ABAB draft?

A snake draft reverses the picking direction every round, while a straight ABAB draft keeps the same captain picking first every single round. In a snake draft with two captains, the order looks like A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A — captain A opens, captain B immediately picks twice in a row, then it flips back. In a straight ABAB draft, the order is A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B — captain A always picks before captain B, every round, with no reversal.

The snake draft is the fairer of the two for any draft longer than one round: reversing direction splits the first-pick advantage evenly between both captains, while straight ABAB hands it to the same captain every round. Both formats give each captain the same four picks over an 8-player draft — what differs is who gets first crack at the best remaining player, round after round, and that is exactly what a captains draft for a Dota 2 draft night lives or dies on.

Why does straight ABAB order favor one captain?

In a straight ABAB order, captain A picks first in every single round, which means captain A always gets first choice of whoever is left in the pool, and captain B is always choosing from what A didn't take. Round 1: A picks the best player available, B picks second-best. Round 2: A again picks first from what remains, B again picks second. That pattern repeats for all four rounds — captain A gets the top pick of the pool four times out of four, and captain B never once gets to choose before A.

That is the actual unfairness in ABAB, not the total pick count. Over a full draft, always getting the first look at the best remaining player compounds — captain A's team ends up built from four "best available" picks, while captain B's team is built from four "second-best available" picks. Straight ABAB order hands the entire first pick advantage to one captain for the whole draft.

Does a snake draft actually cancel that advantage?

Yes — because the direction reverses every two picks, both captains get an equal share of the "first look" advantage across the draft. Breaking the sequence A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A into pairs shows why: pair one is A-then-B, pair two is B-then-A, pair three is A-then-B, pair four is B-then-A. Captain A gets first choice of the pool in pairs one and three; captain B gets first choice in pairs two and four. Each captain gets the advantageous first pick exactly twice out of four pairs, instead of one captain getting it every single time.

This is the same reversing structure used in fantasy sports snake drafts, applied to a 10-player Dota 2 in-house lobby. It doesn't guarantee identical teams — captains still make different judgment calls — but it removes the structural bias built into a straight order.

The reversal only needs to happen once per pair to do its job — it doesn't need to reverse every single pick, only the direction each new pair starts in. That's a small distinction, but it's the part people get wrong when they try to redesign the format: reversing every individual pick instead of every pair would just recreate a different flavor of imbalance rather than removing it.

When would a straight ABAB order not actually matter?

A straight order stops mattering once the draft is down to a single pair of picks, because at that point there's no round to reverse — captain A picking first followed by captain B picking second is the entire draft, and snake versus straight produce an identical result. The unfairness in ABAB only compounds because it repeats the same first-pick advantage across multiple rounds; a one-round, two-pick draft has nothing to compound.

In practice this means the fairness gap between the two formats grows with the size of the player pool. A 10-player draft with four rounds shows the ABAB bias clearly; a smaller draft with fewer rounds shows it less, simply because there is less repetition for the advantage to build on.

Which order does DOTA DRAFT use, and why?

DOTA DRAFT runs the snake order automatically: A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A, enforced by the tool rather than left to the captains to remember or agree on mid-draft. Once two captains are set — manually, by random wheel, or by auto-selecting the two highest-MMR players in the pool — the picks alternate in that exact reversing pattern with a 30-second timer on each turn.

The pick that a lobby's most contested player goes to — often the one player everyone wants, sometimes a mechanically demanding hero main like an Invoker player — still has to wait for their spot in the sequence regardless of which captain wants them first. That is the entire point of the format: the order decides who gets first crack at the best remaining player, and a snake order spreads that advantage evenly instead of handing it to one captain for the whole draft.

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