Fixed partners & keeping players apart

Most of the time the Mixer's job is to keep shuffling partners and opponents. Sometimes two people need to stay together: a couple who came to play as a team, a coach working with one student, or 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 Mixer normally does still applies; it plans around the pair as one unit.

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.

How to link a pair

You link from the player list:

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.

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, but you can't put three or more people into one 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. A linked pair behaves like this:

• If both partners are due to sit, 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 spot is open and one partner is due, that partner sits alone for the round and the other plays with someone else. The pair is back together on the next mix. The one exception: if an unlinked player is exactly as due, they sit instead and the pair stays together.
• If two or more spots are open but only one partner is due (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.

Never splitting a pair

If you'd rather a pair is never split on the bench, tick Keep fixed partners together, even if they sit out less under Sitting Out Controls. With one spot open, the pair then plays on and the spot goes to the next player in line, even one who has sat more recently. The cost is real: on a night where exactly one player sits each round (9 players on 2 courts, 13 on 3), the pair never sits and everyone else covers for them. On nights with two or more sitters a round they still sit together, roughly on schedule. The setting only applies at the default Sit-out Weight of 98.

"Not a perfect round robin"

With 6 to 12 fixed-partner teams on the right number of courts (3 courts for 6 or 7 teams, 4 for 8 or 9, 5 for 10 or 11, 6 for 12), every team plays every other team exactly once, with no repeats. That happens only when every active player is linked into a team and the mix settings are the Default ones.

If a mix could have done that but did not, a notice, Not a perfect round robin, appears once per session and says why: either your settings turned it off (the Ladder Team Mode preset, for example), or a team was moved or sat out of turn. The fix is the same in both cases: open Built-in Presets and choose Default if the settings were the cause, then press REmix to redo this round. Mix Next does not restore it. Four teams never need the notice, and five teams have no such schedule.

Keeping players apart (Bad Blood)

Fixed partners force two people together. Bad Blood does the opposite: it keeps 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: two players marked Bad Blood are kept apart unless the roster leaves no other way to fill the courts, in which case the Mixer 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

• Settings reference to fine-tune the rest of the rotation around your pairs.
• Mixed doubles and gender for gender-balanced courts.