As someone who writes for a living, I’m all for acronyms. They save space, they’re catchy, and they lead to fascinating arguments about proper pronunciation (seriously, when the creator of the thing tells you it’s pronounced jif, then that’s what I’m going with, ok?).

But sometimes, they become so ingrained in the vernacular that everyone assumes we all know exactly what they mean. And that can create some problems, especially when it’s a nuanced concept like VBD or value-based drafting. And even if you know what VBD is, what about when your buddy mentions VORP? How about VOLS? Can I interest you in some VONA?

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So let’s get rid of the stigma associated with all these bad boys and just dive into the concepts. By the time we’re done, you’ll be able to talk about every value-based drafting acronym with ease, even VAYKADDCITFRFY, an acronym I just made up, which stands for Value After Your Kid Accidentally Drafts Dalvin Cook In The Fourth Round For You (that happened in an expert league draft I did on Father’s Day – salvaged it, but it wasn’t pretty).

At its core, value-based drafting is simply the concept of valuing players not by the points they are projected to score, but by how much they are projected to outperform their peers at the same position. For example, the top three players in terms of fantasy points scored last year were Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, and Drew Brees. But even if you projected them to finish that way again, there’s no way you’d take any of them over David Johnson or Le’Veon Bell, and they certainly wouldn’t be drafted among the top few picks. That’s because we don’t just draft based on who is projected to score the most points. We draft based on who is most valuable in comparison to other players at their same position.

That’s it. You now understand the broad concept of VBD. And because you haven’t been drafting quarterbacks with the number-one pick, you’ve basically been employing it all along. I’m so proud of you.

But our work isn’t done yet, my friends, because there are several different ways to employ the VBD strategy. So let’s take a look at some of them.

What is VORP?

The most common and popular is VORP or Value Over Replacement Player. It simply means that a player’s value is relative to the value of the best option on the waiver wire at the same position. So let’s assume you’re in a 12-team league that starts one quarterback and two running backs, and you’ve estimated that 15 quarterbacks and 32 running backs are going to be drafted (and other players too, obviously, I’m just not talking about them here – stop yelling!).

Let’s say Aaron Rodgers is projected to score 380 points. But the 16th-ranked quarterback, or your best waiver wire quarterback, is projected to finish with 250.6 points.

In contrast, David Johnson is projected to score 327.8 points. But the 33rd-ranked running back (aka, your best waiver wire running back in this example) is projected to finish with 121.6 points.

So, doing some fancy math, we see that David Johnson is projected to score 206.2 points more than the best waiver wire running back, while Aaron Rodgers is projected to score just 129.4 points more than the best waiver wire quarterback. Drafting using VORP would rank these players based on that number – the difference between the player’s projected fantasy points and the projected fantasy points of the best waiver wire player at the same position. So the fact that Rodgers is projected to score significantly more than Johnson is relevant, but doesn’t decide your rankings.

(Note: A variation of VORP is called VOLS, or Valuation Over Last Starter. This just means that instead of valuing a player relative to the best waiver wire option at his position, you value a player relative to the worst player at the same position who will end up as a starter for one of your opponents. That means that Rodgers’ value would be based off the difference in projected points between him and the 12th quarterback, or the worst starting option in your 12-team league. Either way works, my friends.)

What is VONA?

When you want to get a little fancier and more in depth, you can start to think about VONA or Value Over Next Available. Rather than just looking at a player’s value over someone on the waiver wire, VONA involves looking at relative player values on a round-by-round basis. In other words, VONA cares about VORP, but it also cares about who will be available for you at your next pick. If you’re debating between Matt Ryan and Tyreek Hill, VONA essentially values those players based on who is likely to be available when your next pick comes up. It is highly dependent on your draft position and the way your draft has unfolded.

So, let’s really take a minute to let this sink in. You’re now an expert in value-based drafting AND the acronyms that go along with all the cool concepts. But I know you’re thinking two things right now. The first is “Wait, tell me more about that whole VAYKADDCITFRFY thing!” No can do, my friends. I simply can’t endorse that strategy. Though I’ll say that drafting while trying to read your son a bedtime story is not recommended.

The second is “How am I supposed to keep track of all these acronyms when I have 90 seconds to make my pick and my best fantasy frenemy just sniped Stefon Diggs from me?” It’s a fair question. It’s not easy, but if you create rankings based on VORP, then the hard part is done. Incorporating VONA manually certainly isn’t easy, but if you keep an active watch over everyone else’s roster as the draft goes on, you can pretty readily determine around how many at each position will be drafted before your next pick.

For me, the answer is much simpler, and it’s that you should use the FantasyPros Draft Assistant. It does all the work for you. It syncs with your draft and provides both VORP and VONA values on the fly as you go along. At any given time, you can see suggested picks based on the percentage of experts who would recommend that player for your team based on your and everyone else’s roster, a roster grid for every team in your league, and the percentage chance that every single player will be available for you at your next pick.

I kid you not that I got into a very polite discussion on Twitter last month with a reader who said that his league banned use of the Draft Assistant because it essentially made everyone an expert. When I told him that it might be the best compliment he could possibly give for the Draft Assistant, he replied:

Very true. For anyone reading this, it works so well we had to ban it from our league! I use y'all to mock so Im a supporter of your product

— Jonathan LaCour (@_Jlacour) May 25, 2017

If you don’t believe me, feel free to test it out in the Draft Simulator and do some mocks. What you see there is exactly what you’d see using Draft Assistant, except it would be synced to your actual draft as it’s happening. In my humble opinion, it is by far the best tool to help with your draft, and without a doubt the best way to implement every strategy that can be boiled down to an acronym that begins with a “V!”

I hope you’ve enjoyed our foray into the broad concept of value-based drafting, and how you can and should employ it to dominate your league. Just please stay away from VAYKADDCITFRFY! Not worth it.

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Dan Harris is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him on Twitter at @danharris80.