Balance Teams: How TeamPick Splits Teams by Win Rate

Which modes it applies to

Balance teams only works with “Instant”. Instant decides the teams and shows them right away, so factoring in win rates doesn't hide anything from the players.

In Pinball race, the order the balls land is the result. In Number draw, the number each player gets is the result. In Ladder and Card flip, the spot each player picks is the result. Secretly mixing win rates into those would make the animation a lie, so those four modes are always pure luck. You can compare the modes on the draw modes page.

How win rates are calculated

• A player's win rate is the number of games they won in this group divided by the number of games they played. Records from other groups are never mixed in.
• Anyone with fewer than 3 games is treated as 50%, whatever their actual record is. Otherwise a newcomer who won their first game would count as a 100% superstar and tilt the teams the wrong way.
• If a player has played 5 or more games in this round's format (for example 5:5), their rate is nudged toward their win rate in that format. The weight is the number of games in that format divided by 20, capped at one half. At 5 games the format rate counts for a quarter, and at 10 games or more it counts for half.

The format adjustment exists because the people who shine in 2:2 aren't always the same ones who carry a 5:5. Being strong in small games doesn't guarantee being strong in big ones, so TeamPick only leans on format records once there are enough games in the same format as the current round.

How the fairest split is found

TeamPick averages the win rates of each team's players and picks the split with the smallest gap between the highest team average and the lowest. The rule that team sizes differ by at most one player still holds with Balance teams on.

If there are 200,000 possible splits or fewer, every single one is checked. Splitting 12 players into 2 teams gives 462 options, and 20 players into 2 teams gives 92,378, so typical custom game groups are always checked exhaustively. When there are far too many options, such as 30 players into 6 teams, TeamPick starts from 400 random splits and keeps swapping one player at a time between two teams until it can't improve any further.

If several splits are equally good, one of them is chosen at random. That means on day one, when nobody has a record yet, turning on balance gives exactly the same result as pure random, and the same people don't get stuck on the same team every time.

Example: 6 players, 2 teams

Say you have six players with win rates of 90%, 80%, 70%, 30%, 20% and 10%. Pure random could put 90%, 80% and 70% on the same team. Balance teams puts 90%, 30% and 20% on one team (average about 46.7%) and 80%, 70% and 10% on the other (average about 53.3%). With these six players, no split has a smaller gap between the averages.

Now a new friend joins who has only played 1 game. They count as 50%, and the seven players are split into 4 and 3. After a few more rounds, once they pass 3 games, their real win rate kicks in.

Things to keep in mind

A win rate is only a rough shadow of skill. With few games, luck plays a big part, and the same player can swing a lot depending on role or how they're feeling that day. The “Stats” tab shows the number of games next to each rate, so don't take small samples too seriously.

The more consistently you log results, the more accurate the balance gets. The single most important habit is tapping the winner on the “Which team won?” card that appears after “Pick again”. For joke rounds, just tap “Don't record”. Logging is explained in the how to use guide, and tips for building a long record are in custom game tips.