The Mixer

Fixed partners

Lock couples or training pairs together while everyone else rotates on fresh partners and opponents.

Updated 2026-06-06

Most of the time the Mixer's whole job is to keep shuffling — fresh partners, fresh opponents, round after round. But sometimes two people need to stay together. A couple who came to play as a team. A coach working with one student. Two friends who only signed up because they get to partner up. Fixed partners pin those two together while everyone else keeps rotating normally.

What a fixed partner is

A fixed pair is two players the Mixer always seats on the same side of the net. They partner each other every round they're on court. Everything else the engine normally does still applies — it just plans around the pair as a unit instead of two separate players.

What stays fresh:

  • Their opponents still rotate. A fixed pair faces a new set of opponents as deep into the session as the math allows — you lose the partner variety for those two, nothing else.
  • Everyone else mixes normally, around the locked pair.

Linking happens from the player list, not a settings panel:

  1. Open the first player's three-dot menu (the ⋮ next to their name).
  2. Choose Link to Partner....
  3. Pick the second player from the list that appears.

That's it — both players are now linked to each other. The list only shows players who aren't already linked, so you can't accidentally chain three people together.

To change or remove a link later, tap the 🔗 link badge shown on a linked player. You'll get the choice to Unlink the pair or Link to Someone Else. Unlinking frees both players back into the normal rotation.

One partner each

A link is strictly one-to-one. Each player can be in one fixed pair at a time, and the pair points at each other. There's no limit on how many separate pairs you can set up — link as many couples as you like — but you can't put three or more people into a single locked group. If you need a player to switch teammates, unlink first, then link them to someone new.

Fixed pairs and sit-outs

When you have more players than court space, someone has to sit, and the Mixer tries to keep that fair. Here's how a linked pair behaves:

  • If both partners are due to sit anyway, they sit together — they go off and come back as a unit, so a couple isn't split across the bench and the court.
  • If only one partner is due to sit — because the other has played more in a row and would be dragged to the bench just to keep the pair whole — the Mixer stops and asks you. A short dialog names the pair and their play counts and gives you two choices: Sit Together (bench both) or Break Link (sit the one who's up, play the other for this round only). You can also cancel the mix.

The dialog pre-selects a suggestion. As long as the two partners' play counts are close, it leans toward Sit Together and keeps the pair whole. Once the gap grows wide — one partner has played several rounds more in a row than the other — it suggests Break Link so the fresher partner isn't benched unfairly. Either way the call is yours, and a broken link only lasts that single round; the pair is back together on the next mix.

Keeping players apart (Bad Blood)

Fixed partners force two people together. Bad Blood does the opposite — it tells the engine to keep two people apart. Use it for a pair who clash, a coach who shouldn't be matched against their own student, or anyone you'd rather not keep seeing on the same court.

Open a player's three-dot menu (⋮) and choose Bad Blood. The dialog has two separate lists:

  • Never partner — the players this person should never be teamed with.
  • Never oppose — the players this person should never be put across the net from.

Fill either list, or both. Unlike a fixed-partner link, Bad Blood is a soft rule: the engine avoids the pairing wherever the math allows, but if the roster leaves it no other option it still builds a playable round rather than refusing to mix. Entries stay attached to the player even when the person they're avoiding isn't in tonight's session, so the rule is still there when that player comes back.

Next

Related