Split them into teams.

As even as the numbers allow

Nine people across four teams gives you 3, 2, 2, 2 — never 5, 2, 1, 1. The list is shuffled with the same cryptographic randomness the wheel uses and then dealt out one at a time, like cards, so no team can end up more than one player larger than another.

That also means list order decides nothing. The first four names you typed will not end up as team one, which is the failure mode of every quick-and-dirty splitter that just slices the list into chunks.

Two to fifty teams. The quick buttons cover two, three and four; type a number for anything else.

When it does not divide evenly

Somebody has to be on the bigger team, and there is no clever way around it. What matters is that the extra place is allocated at random rather than always landing on the team at the top of the list, which is what the shuffle takes care of.

For anything competitive, decide before you generate what happens to the odd player out — sitting a rotation, refereeing, joining the team that is down a player. Deciding after you can see the names is how arguments start.

Naming the teams

Team 1 and Team 2 work, but names stick better in a room. Open Name the teams and type them; they carry through to the copied result, so what you paste into a group chat reads the way you would say it out loud.

Copy takes the whole split as plain text, with each team and its members on their own lines — ready for a message, a whiteboard, or a printout taped to a wall.

Running it again

Generate as many times as you like; nothing is saved between runs and every run reshuffles from scratch. Re-rolling because a split looks lopsided in a way the numbers cannot fix is fine — but re-rolling until your friends are on your team is not randomness, and everybody watching will know.

If the same group meets repeatedly and you want to avoid the same pairings every week, the honest fix is to keep a note of last week’s teams rather than hoping chance sorts it out. Random has no memory.

For picking one person rather than splitting everybody, the wheel is the better tool — it is more fun to watch and it records.

Questions

Is the split actually random?

Yes. The list is shuffled with crypto.getRandomValues before it is dealt out, so a name near the top of your list is no more likely to land on team one.

How many teams can I make?

Two to fifty, and never more teams than you have names. Two, three and four are one click; anything else you type in.

Can I get even teams when the numbers do not divide?

They come out as even as arithmetic allows — sizes never differ by more than one, and which team gets the extra player is random rather than always the first.

Does it save my teams?

No. Nothing is stored and every generate starts over. Copy the result if you want to keep it.