No more captains picking sides
When two captains take turns picking players, someone always gets picked last. A random draw skips that awkward moment: nobody picks anybody, chance builds the teams and everyone sees it happen.
By number of teams or by team size
Two ways to do it, depending on what you know ahead of time:
- Number of teams: you have two fields, four trivia tables or five workshop stations; the site splits everyone between those teams.
- People per team: you want pairs, teams of five for indoor soccer or groups of three in class; the site works out how many teams you need.
Either way, the teams are the same size to within one person. With 23 people in 4 teams, you get three teams of 6 and one team of 5.
A real shuffle
The list is shuffled with the browser’s secure random generator, then dealt out one person at a time to each team, the way you’d deal cards. So the order in which you typed the names doesn’t matter. Not everyone happy with the result? “Shuffle again” makes a whole new draw, in front of everyone.
Teams balanced by skill level?
Chance doesn’t know who’s good at what. For a match where balance matters, here’s a simple trick: run two separate draws, one for experienced players and one for beginners, with the same number of teams, then put team 1 with team 1, team 2 with team 2, and so on.
What next?
To decide which team starts, flip a coin or pick a random order. Playing a quiz in teams? Hand each team one phone so every team has its own buzzer. In class or at home, our guide to fair random draws has more tips so that everyone accepts the result.