Guides/Fair team split

Fair team split from a list

Captains picking friends skews sides. A fairer approach: freeze the roster, shuffle once, then deal names into team buckets in order.

Deal-after-shuffle method

1. Deduplicate the list first —remove duplicates.
2. Shuffle fairly —seeded shuffleif you need a replayable order.
3. Deal like cards: 1→A, 2→B, 3→A… until empty. Team sizes differ by at most one.

Worked example

11 players, 2 teams: after shuffle, positions 1,3,5,7,9,11 → Team A (6); even slots → Team B (5). Same spirit aswithout replacement.

Skill balance caveat

Random teams are fair on process, not guaranteed equal skill. For competitive leagues, snake-draft by rating is a different goal — publish which rule you use.

Related

Pick without bias·Speaker order·Raffles·Random List Picker

Common mistakes

• Re-shuffling after seeing who landed where.
• Leaving captains to “trade” without a published rule.
• Including no-shows in the frozen list.