The game picker

The picker’s job is to choose four players for the next court so the evening feels fair and the games are worth playing. It weighs eight things at once and picks the combination that scores best overall. None of them is absolute on its own - they are soft signals that get balanced against each other. The Auto-Pick settings, further down, let you promote any of them to a hard rule when you want to.

What the picker weighs

• Expected closeness. Will this be a competitive game or a blowout?
• Skill balance. Is the skill range across the four players reasonable?
• Wait fairness. Have any of these players been waiting too long?
• Gender balance. If you run mixed games, does the team composition reflect that?
• Avoid recent repeats. Have these four just played each other or with each other?
• Partner / opponent variety. Are people getting mixed around through the night?
• Queue fairness. Are players going on roughly in the order they finished?
• Straight back on (avoided). Are players coming straight off a court being put back on immediately?

The Next Game Prep panel (left) shows the picker’s suggestion for the next court. Swap players if you want, or just Start.

Each suggestion arrives in well under a second, so play keeps moving. For smaller groups (six or eight mates on one court) the picker is doing partner-variety and game-balance work that is surprisingly tedious to track manually past an hour of play. For a larger club it is the difference between an organised night and a queue argument.

Nothing the picker does is binding. If you want different players on a court, drag and drop to swap them. The picker re-checks the same eight factors when you do, so it will flag a swap that creates a serious mismatch but never block it.

Everyone can see why

For any suggested game you can open the reasons behind it - which players were waiting longest, how the levels balance, and why this combination came out ahead of the others. No more “the system got it wrong” debates without the evidence in front of you.

Settings and recommendations

The settings cog on the session board opens that session’s settings, where you can tune how the picker behaves. Sensible defaults work for most clubs; the controls below let you adapt to your room.

Session setup

• Number of courts. How many courts are running in parallel. The picker assigns players one court at a time, but knows the full picture so it does not strand someone who is needed elsewhere.
• Prep panels (1 or 2). “Prep panels = 1” shows you only the next game. “Prep panels = 2” shows the next two so an organiser can stage a game ahead while one is still in play. Most clubs want 1. Set to 2 if your organiser likes to stay ahead of the queue, or you have very fast games.
• Ranking method (Win % or Rating Change). Drives how the Attendees view orders the night-end leaderboard. Win % is the classic “most wins on top”. Rating Change rewards players who beat the system’s expectations - a player who lost three out of four but those losses were to much stronger pairs may rank higher than the player who won three out of four against weaker pairs.

Auto-Pick

These toggles let you promote individual soft signals to hard rules. Defaults are off - the picker already considers them as part of the eight factors above, so most clubs do not need to override.

• Prevent straight back on. When on, a player who has just finished a game is excluded outright from the next court (not just down-weighted). Useful for clubs that feel strongly about everyone getting a breather.
• Force include first queue player. When on, the longest-waiting player is guaranteed to be in the next game even if including them is not the picker’s ideal balance choice. Useful for clubs where queue-fairness is a vocal concern.
• Limit to first N players in queue. When on, the picker only considers the front N of the queue for the next game. Useful for very large clubs (40+ players) where considering the whole queue is unnecessary. Off by default; turn on with N = 8 or 10 if your picks feel slow.
• Apply constraints when manually editing suggestions. When on, if you swap players on a suggested game, the picker re-evaluates the eight factors and flags issues. Recommended on.

Recommended starting points

The defaults are sensible. Three rough starting points by group size:

• 6 to 12 players, one or two courts (the “mates” tier). Defaults are fine. Consider turning Prevent straight back on ON, since with so few players the picker’s wait-time signal is weaker. Skip Limit to first N entirely. Prep panels = 1.
• 15 to 40 players (typical club night). Defaults are fine. Prep panels = 1 to start; move to 2 if your organiser likes to stay a game ahead. Force include first queue player only if you have vocal queue-watchers.
• 40+ players (large club, parallel halls). Prep panels = 2. Limit to first N players in queue = 10 or 12 to keep picks tractable. Force include first queue player recommended on so the longest-waiting always gets a court.