Team Generator

Paste a list of names, set the number of teams and click Make teams, and this team generator shuffles everyone and deals them into groups of near-equal size. It is used for gully cricket and five-a-side football, classroom group work, hackathons, quiz nights and office activities.

How the teams are made

1. Each non-empty line in Names (one per line) becomes one person. Extra spaces are trimmed and blank lines are ignored.
2. The list is shuffled with the Fisher–Yates algorithm, driven by the browser's cryptographic random generator, so every ordering is equally likely.
3. The shuffled names are dealt out in turn: the first to Team 1, the second to Team 2, and so on, wrapping round until everyone is placed.

Each team is shown with its size in brackets, for example "Team 2 (4)", followed by its members separated by commas. Number of teams defaults to 2; values below 2 are raised to 2 and decimals are rounded down, so 2.7 gives two teams. You need at least as many names as teams.

Example: seven players, three teams

With Aarav, Diya, Kabir, Meera, Rohan, Sara and Vivaan split into three teams, one run produced:

Team 1 (3): Sara, Rohan, Kabir
Team 2 (2): Vivaan, Aarav
Team 3 (2): Diya, Meera

Team sizes never differ by more than one. When the names do not divide evenly, the extra people always land in the lowest-numbered teams. Click again for a completely new split.

Balancing skill, not just numbers

A random split is fair in the sense that nobody gets to pick favourites, but it can still put all the strong players together. To avoid that, seed by tiers:

1. Divide players into groups such as experienced, average and new.
2. Run the generator separately for each group, using the same number of teams every time.
3. Combine Team 1 from every run, Team 2 from every run, and so on.

Every final team then gets a mix of each tier. The same trick keeps close friends apart in a classroom, or mixes departments at an office offsite.

Tips for smoother team days

• If two people share a name, add an initial (Rahul S, Rahul K) so the lists are unambiguous.
• Take a screenshot before clicking again, because each click reshuffles everyone.
• With an odd headcount in a two-team game, the smaller side can take the first turn or get a rotating substitute.
• Need captains? Choose them first with the Random Picker, then generate the remaining players into teams.

Nothing you paste leaves the page, which is useful when the list is a class register.