Random team generator for tournament

Q: Can I print the teams?

Yes. Print makes a sheet with one card per team, which is easy to pin up on a board at the venue.

Start with the players, get eight teams, then put the teams in a bracket. Replace the sample names with your registration list and press Make teams.

TeamsTeam sizePairs

Number of teams

Balance by skill Random team names

32 people

Names, one per line

32 names

Paste a column from a spreadsheet, or type. Max *3 gives Max skill level 3 when you balance by skill.

Random team generator Tournament teams

Fair teams first, then a fair bracket

A tournament has two draws, and people often mix them up. The first decides who plays with whom. The second decides who plays against whom. If you do both by hand, someone suspects the organizer of putting friends on the easy side. Doing them one after the other with a tool that shows its work keeps the day friendly.

This page starts with 32 sample players split into 8 teams of four, a good size for a round-robin on a backyard court or a bracket of eight. Teams of four also cover rotating formats where two players play and two rest, as in cornhole or doubles pickleball. Paste your own registration list, and set the number of teams to match how many bracket slots you have.

For the second draw, type the team names, one per line, into the random order generator. The numbered result is your seeding: team 1 meets team 2 in the first round, team 3 meets team 4, and so on. If the field is not a power of two, give the top-drawn teams a first-round bye.

From registration list to bracket

In Names, paste the entries you collected. Entries from a sign-up spreadsheet can go in as they are, one per line.
Check that Teams is selected and set Number of teams. The line below the buttons says how big each team is.
Press Make teams, then name the teams if you like in Team names. Show the result with Present so every player sees the same screen.
Open the random order generator, enter the team names and shuffle. The numbered list is the bracket, top to bottom.

Questions about drawing a tournament

How many teams should a tournament have?

Eight is the easiest: three rounds of single elimination, 7 matches in all. Four teams is fine for a short evening, and sixteen needs a full day. In a round-robin of eight, each team plays seven games.

Can I balance teams so one does not get all the strong players?

The tool is random by default. If you know who is strong, write a level after the name, like Dani *3, and turn on Balance by skill. Each team then gets a similar total of levels.

What if the number of players does not divide evenly?

Then some teams are one person smaller than the others. With 30 players and 8 teams you get six teams of four and two of three. If the sizes matter for the game, add a substitute to the smaller teams.

Should seeding be random too?

For a casual event, yes. The random order generator gives each team the same chance of every bracket slot. If you want the best teams to meet only in the final, seed them by hand instead.

Can I print the teams?

Yes. Print makes a sheet with one card per team, which is easy to pin up on a board at the venue.