January 15, 2026 1 min read
Building a Real-Time Draft System
Build Log
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How I built WebSocket-based multiplayer draft rooms for Hoop Almanac, reducing latency from 450ms to 95ms.
Real-time systems are hard. When I started building the draft room feature for Hoop Almanac, I knew I needed to handle concurrent users picking players with sub-100ms latency. Here's how I approached it.
The Challenge
Fantasy basketball drafts require instant feedback. When one user picks a player, all other users need to see that pick immediately and have that player removed from their available pool.