Semi-Pro Trade Trick...(Cheat?)

[daltontr]

I briefly mentioned this last night on twitch, but that really isn't the right forum and I'm not at all certain I was entirely clear about what I was talking about. I wouldn't call this a glitch, but it does seem unrealistic and imho it does create an opportunity to take advantage of the AI...let me try and explain. During the trade process, there are two indicators on whether or not your offer is going to be potentially successful. First, you need to meet any salary cap requirements and two, your team cannot have a distinct advantage or the AI will simply say no. In my experience, if you can weight the trade in favor of the AI, you'll dramatically improve your odds of completing the trade. What I found by accident is that if you accept a 2nd round pick from the other team, that will sometimes trigger the team to accept the deal.

Example:
The Initial offer from team 1(Human) is Player A and a 1st round draft pick to team 2(AI) for Player B. Neither team is being indicated as having an advantage, but team 2 says it is still not enough. So, rather than offer an additional player or pick, the human offers to "Take" a second round pick from Team 2 and that alone can sometimes push the trade in favor of the AI and you can then complete the deal.

Is there a real world scenario where that could actually happen? I think not, because why not just accept the initial offer? I get that second round picks are virtually useless, but teams don't have to sign second round picks, so why would the AI seemingly need to get rid of one? Obviously, if you think your taking advantage of the AI, you can always choose to reject the deal, but sometimes it is very tempting and I would be lying if I had not taken advantage of this very scenario on at least one occasion. I simply told myself that the other GM was apparently on his third martini and since no one actually benefits from second rounders, no harm no foul.

Granted, it doesn't happen all the time and it's very difficult to replicate, because there seems to be some randomness to how teams react to a trade offers, but it does happen.