Weighted picker
Some entries count more.
Bonus entries, extra tickets, boosted roles — weighted properly.
Your list
8 entries*3 for extra chancesPut a star and a number after a name to give it more chances — Alex *3 is three entries on one line.
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Draw setup
Wheel colours
Spinnza
Custom colours8
Type a hex code or use the well. The wheel repaints as you type, and the colours repeat around it — you never have to pick one per name.
How does Spinnza choose? How Spinnza chooses ›
The winner is picked before the wheel moves, using your browser’s cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues) rather than Math.random(). The range is reduced by rejection sampling, so no entry is even slightly more likely than another because of where it sits in the list.
Weights are applied before the draw: an entry with three chances occupies three of the total, and duplicate rows each count separately. The complete list is always used, even when the wheel is too crowded to show every name on a slice.
The animation is presentation. Once a winner is chosen, the wheel is told where to stop — it never decides anything.
8 entries
Showing an example list. Replace it with your own names.
Two ways to add weights
By hand: put a star and a number after the name. “Alex *3” means Alex has three chances, so on a list with Jamie and Sam at one each, Alex wins about sixty per cent of the time.
From a spreadsheet: pick a weight column during import. A bonus-entries column, a ticket-quantity column, a multiplier — anything numeric works, and blank or unreadable values become one chance rather than removing someone from the draw.
People and chances are different numbers
Under the wheel you will see “482 entries · 637 total chances” when weights are on. That distinction matters: 482 people are in the draw, and there are 637 chances between them.
The wheel does not repeat a name once per chance. It shows the entry once and applies the weight to the draw, which keeps a heavily weighted list readable.
When weights are the wrong answer
Weights make somebody more likely to win. They do not make anybody certain to win, and a five-times weight in a draw of two hundred is still a long way from a promise. If an entry is supposed to be guaranteed, it is not a draw — give them the prize and draw for the rest.
They also stop being readable long before they stop being correct. A weight of three is obvious on the wheel; a weight of fifty is a wall of one colour, and at that point the picture has stopped doing its job even though the maths is fine. If one entry is worth fifty, consider whether it belongs in the same draw as the entries worth one.
Showing your working
The reason weights are drawn as separate slices rather than hidden behind one is that a weighted draw is exactly the kind somebody will question. “Alex had three chances” is a claim; three slices with Alex’s name on them is a picture, and it is on the recording.
The counts under the wheel say both numbers — people and total chances — for the same reason. Screenshot that before you spin, or record the draw, and the weighting cannot be argued about afterwards.
Questions
- What happens to a weight of zero or a blank?
- It becomes one chance. Removing somebody from a draw because a spreadsheet cell was empty would be the wrong call to make silently.
- Are weights exact?
- Yes. Weights are whole numbers of chances and the draw walks the cumulative total with an integer, so there is no rounding drift even across thousands of entries.
The wheel is free and always will be. A recorded proof spin is $1.99, one time, no subscription — how it works.