Know your preliminary order. Having the first pick in the first round and the last pick in the second will require a very different strategy than picking about the middle of each round. Prepare for both possibilities.

Know how many teams are in your league. Eight, ten, twelve, even fourteen team leagues provide different levels of available talent. 196 players will be selected in a 14-team league of 14 rounds against 112 in an 8-team league.

Know the first three rounds of your league’s draft. Hint: They’ll look pretty much the same in any league, so let’s cover the first three rounds of a standard 10-team draft.

QB Aaron Rodgers plus RBs Ray Rice, Arian Foster, LeSean McCoy and Chris Johnson will be, in some order, the top five picks. Franchise RBs are scarcer than ever, so forget about choosing WRs ahead of time. The quarterback group is deep, too. Running backs Jones-Drew and Trent Richardson plus quarterbacks Brady and Brees are near deadly locks to complete the first round. WR Calvin Johnson sneaks in.

If you own “turnaround” picks (last pick in first, first pick in second), make the most of them – get talents that complement each other. A top QB or WR plus the best RB left would be a huge compliment to each other. So would a formidable backfield duo of Matt Forte and Darren McFadden.

Running backs Forte, McFadden, Fred Jackson and Ryan Matthews come out in the first round of the second round of any competitive league. Quarterbacks Cam Newton and Matt Stafford have proven to be elite and go into the second round of any ten-team league. WR Julio Jones, Wes Welker and Andre Johnson finish the round along with RB Ahmad Bradshaw.

If you only have one RB after the first two rounds, you should get one in the third. Expect DeMarco Murray, Frank Gore, Marshawn Lynch, and probably Michael Turner to be available in leagues of 10 or fewer teams. The elite QBs and WRs worth skipping a RB are gone, and after this round, so will the RBs you want in your lineup.

If you have two RBs and a WR or QB after the first three rounds, focus on WR. Five teams already have quarterbacks, so their competition for remaining talent is light. Going for an elite TE in the fourth or fifth round will do wonders for your roster. You can still come back for Romo, Rivers, Dalton, Cutler, or Manning later.

Pick an RB like Mark Ingram or Darren Sproles in the middle rounds, but be smart in these rounds and trend, don’t chase. If you can’t get a higher TE, get a higher D / ST. Most people won’t write two TEs, so the second-tier ones will still be around. Likewise, if you don’t get a top D / ST or kicker, leave those positions until the final rounds. They will probably be on the exemptions for week 5, anyway.

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