Shuffled properly, then dealt out evenly
Shuffle a list of names and divide it evenly into any number of teams. For classrooms, workshops and five-a-side.
Letting captains pick is slow and leaves someone chosen last. A random split is faster and takes the social sting out of it entirely.
Names are shuffled with a Fisher-Yates pass and then dealt round-robin, so team sizes differ by at most one even when the count does not divide evenly.
Every team with its members listed Participant and team counts The largest team size, so you can see the split is fair Teams are balanced by size only — skill, age and role are not considered. Uses a Fisher-Yates shuffle, which gives every arrangement equal probability. Are the teams evenly sized? As even as the numbers allow. Dealing round-robin means sizes never differ by more than one person.
Can I balance by skill instead? Not here — this randomises by name only. For skill balance, sort players into tiers first and randomise within each tier.
Is the shuffle genuinely random? It uses Fisher-Yates, which gives every possible arrangement equal probability. Naive shuffles built on sort comparators do not.
How do I enter names? One per line or separated by commas. Both work, and blank entries are ignored.
Worked example Six people, two teams
Input: Six names, 2 teams
Output: Two teams of three
Note: With seven names one team gets four. Round-robin dealing keeps the gap to a single person rather than piling everyone into the first team.
