Mixer settings reference

The defaults work for a typical drop-in night — most groups never open these modals at all. Reach for them when you want something specific: courts balanced by skill, gender spread across courts, or a faster mix on a large roster.

The controls live in small modals: Game Variety, Sitting Out, Player Mixing, Gender, Rating, Courts, and Quality. Most are priority weights on a 0–99 slider — the higher the weight, the more the engine cares about that goal when building a round. A few are on/off checkboxes; one or two use a percentage or their own range. Higher weight means "try harder at this."

Courts

The court count at the top of the roster — "3 courts" by default — is the setting that matters most. The Mixer uses it to decide how many people play each round and how many rotate through sit-outs. Each court seats four players (doubles). Gain or lose a court mid-session, adjust the count, and the next mix adapts automatically.

There's no separate "players per court" control — doubles means four per court, and the court count does the rest.

Sitting out

Sit-out Weight (default 98) keeps the same people from getting benched repeatedly — it's intentionally high. Lower it only if you want the engine to deprioritize even rest. Max Algorithmic Sitters (default 0) lets the engine bench extra players out of turn to build a better round; raise it only if you're willing to trade a little fairness for tighter matchups.

Fresh partners and opponents

New Partner Weight (default 4) and New Opponent Weight (default 1) — both under Player Mixing — drive the no-repeat behavior. Partner freshness outweighs opponent freshness because drawing the same partner twice feels staler than facing a familiar opponent. Two Game Variety controls layer on top: Duplicate Game Dissuasion avoids repeating the exact same four-player matchup, and Participant Diversity pushes for variety in the early rounds.

Ratings balance

By default the engine ignores ratings and optimizes purely for freshness. Rating balance only kicks in once players actually have ratings — from seed ratings or recorded scores. Raise Opponent Rating Balance Weight to keep both teams on a court evenly matched, or Partner Rating Balance Weight to influence how partners are paired by skill — both default to 0.

Highest Rated Partner Responsibility (default 40%) sets how much the stronger partner is assumed to contribute when the engine estimates a team's combined strength for balancing. Lower it — say to 35% — and the engine leans the estimate toward the weaker partner, on the assumption they'll be hitting most of the balls, so team strength is weighted further toward the lower-rated player; at 50% both partners count equally. This mirrors the partner-split control on the ratings side — see How Elo works.

Early in a new group, the engine avoids putting two completely unrated teams on the same court — with no ratings on either side there's nothing to balance. Once players have worked through their initial placement games, a Disable Unrated vs Unrated Dissuasion checkbox appears in the Rating modal. Leave it off unless you specifically want unrated teams matched against each other.

Gender and mixed doubles

These controls only do anything if your players are tagged by gender. Raise Mixed Doubles Weight (default 0) to favor clean gender-based courts — all-women, all-men, or proper mixed-doubles, whichever you've allowed — over whatever composition falls out naturally. Allow Mixed Doubles Courts and Allow All Men/Women Courts are soft preferences, not hard bans: unchecking one tells the engine to stop favoring that arrangement, not to forbid it when the roster leaves no other option.

Courts modal

All three Courts Controls default to 0 — the engine ignores court and side assignment unless you ask it to.

Court Weight (0–99) rotates players through different court numbers rather than letting them settle on one. Raise it when courts vary noticeably in quality — but use it sparingly, since a high court weight can pull the engine away from partner and opponent freshness. Bad Court (default: None) marks one court as the undesirable one; the engine then distributes bad-court duty evenly. You can label courts 1 through 10, and it works alongside the Bad Court and Multiple Bad Courts presets. Side Weight (0–99) balances which side of the net players stand on — raise it if one side consistently gets sun or wind. For display options — sorting by rating, enabling the Quick Scroll Bar, and so on — see Court controls.

Quality vs speed

Mix Quality vs Speed (default 15) is a single slider. Higher values produce better-optimized rounds at the cost of compute time; lower is faster with slightly looser results. The interface tops out at 40. Most groups never touch it.

Setting	Default	Raise it when…
Sit-out Weight	98	(rarely — already near max)
New Partner Weight	4	repeats feel too frequent
New Opponent Weight	1	you want fresher opponents
Opponent Rating Balance	0	you want even, competitive courts
Mixed Doubles Weight	0	you want gender-based court matchups
Court Weight	0	court quality varies; you want rotation
Side Weight	0	one side of the net is consistently worse
Mix Quality	15	you'll wait longer for tighter rounds

Presets bundle these

You rarely set these one at a time. A preset applies a whole combination in one click — rating balance, gender balance, skill grouping, and the rest — then you fine-tune from there. Pick a preset first, then open individual modals only if something still needs adjusting.

The * modified indicator

Each category button — Game Variety, Sitting Out, Player Mixing, Gender, Rating, Courts, Quality — shows a * whenever any setting in that category differs from your group's defaults. Hover it for a "Settings modified from defaults" tooltip. Inside a modal, individual sliders and checkboxes get their own * when changed from the default; hover for "Modified from default."

The markers clear as soon as you return a value to its default. For a clean slate all at once, apply the Default preset.

The courts-header preset badge

A small badge above the courts summarizes the active algorithm configuration at a glance:

Badge	Color	Meaning
DEFAULT	Green	All settings match the Default preset.
Preset name (e.g. OPP RATING)	Blue	A built-in named preset is active.
Custom preset name	Amber	One of your saved custom presets is active.
Individual change (e.g. OPP RATING 48)	Red	Settings don't match any preset — the changed weights are listed with their current values.
OFFLINE	Fuchsia	Mix Offline mode is on; weight settings are ignored by the offline engine.
SQUADS	Green	Squad mixing is active under the Default preset.

When a named preset is active but you've also nudged the quality slider or highest-rated partner responsibility, those extra changes appear as separate red pills alongside the preset name — a precise record of what you layered on top.

The same badge appears on court cards in the round history view, showing which configuration produced each past round.

Device-local vs server-synced settings

Not all settings travel with you.

Session-synced — your group's mixing weights (partner weight, sit-out weight, ratings balance, gender rules, quality, presets) are stored in localStorage, keyed per group, and bundled with sessions when you save or sync them. They persist across page reloads on the same browser; changes take effect on the next mix.

Device-local only — display preferences are also stored in localStorage but are not bundled with sessions: number of courts available, show/hide rating badges, show/hide consecutive-play badges, sort courts by rating, court pseudonyms, Quick Scroll Bar side, and site-wide zoom level. Switch browsers, sign in on a different device, or clear storage, and these reset to defaults.

What's next

• Presets — apply a whole setting bundle in one tap, or save your own.
• Court controls — display options, Quick Scroll Bar, sorting by rating.
• Run your first mixer — if you're just getting started.