Mixer settings reference
Every Mixer setting explained: courts, sit-out fairness, fresh partners and opponents, ratings balance, gender rules, court weights, and the quality slider.
The defaults work for a typical drop-in night, and 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 Mixer 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." Open them from the Mixing Algorithm section of Games Settings (⚙ in the courts' action-button row). At the bottom of that section, Reset to Defaults puts the presets and all seven control groups back to their factory values; display settings aren't touched.
Three ways to set a weight: drag the slider, nudge it with − and +, or tap the number and type the value you want. Enter or tapping away applies it; Escape cancels. A typed value stays inside the slider's range and rounds to a whole number, except on the three rating sliders, which keep tenths below 1 (see Ratings balance).
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 Mixer to care less about even rest. Max Algorithmic Sitters (default 0) lets the Mixer 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.
Keep fixed partners together, even if they sit out less (default off) stops a fixed pair from ever being split on the bench. When only one spot is open, the pair plays on and someone else sits, so on nights with a single sitter per round the pair may not sit at all. Only applies at Sit-out Weight 98; at 99 the Mixer splits pairs freely for strict fairness, and below 98 pairs aren't kept together on the bench.
Fresh partners and opponents
New Partner Weight (default 4) and New Opponent Weight (default 1), both under Player Mixing, drive the fresh-partner behavior. Partner freshness outweighs opponent freshness because drawing the same partner twice feels staler than facing a familiar opponent. A Game Variety control layers on top: Duplicate Game Dissuasion avoids repeating the exact same four-player matchup.
Crossover Weight (default 1, also under Player Mixing) covers the third kind of repeat: a crossover is a role flip, where someone who was your partner turns up as your opponent, or the other way round. It matters most in the early rounds of a larger session; later on, the partner and opponent weights cover it on their own.
| Crossover Weight | What it does |
|---|---|
| 0 | Off. Role flips are ignored entirely. |
| 1 (default) | A tie-breaker. Used to separate otherwise equally good rounds. |
| Higher | Fewer past partners turn up as opponents (and vice versa), at the cost of more repeats elsewhere. |
Raise it if your group complains about "I just played with them and now I'm against them"; leave it at 1 otherwise.
Ratings balance
By default the Mixer ignores ratings and works purely on freshness. Rating balance only kicks in once players actually have ratings, from seed ratings or recorded scores. The Rating modal has three sliders, all defaulting to 0:
- Similar ratings on court keeps the four players on a court close in rating. It decides who shares a court and never cares how those four split into teams, so your strongest four end up together, the next four on the next court, and so on.
- Evenly matched teams keeps the two teams on a court close in rating. The Highest Rated Partner Responsibility slider (below) sets how much of a team's strength is credited to its stronger partner. In a team ladder with fixed partners, the team's own rating is used instead.
- Similar ratings in partnerships keeps partners close in rating. When a court's four ratings aren't evenly spaced, this pulls against Evenly matched teams: on a court of 2250, 2250, 2000 and 1750 it pairs the two 2250s, and the teams come out 4500 v 3750. Keep it low: a little (Ladder uses 5) steers strong players away from much weaker partners; a lot brings the lopsided teams back.
Which court the strongest four land on is a separate checkbox, Sort Courts by Rating. The sliders mean the same thing whether your group's ratings are tightly bunched or spread wide: equal weights carry equal importance.
Tenths below 1. The three rating sliders take values like 0.1: below 1, the + and − buttons move them a tenth at a time, and a typed value keeps one decimal. From 1 up they are whole numbers like every other slider. Rating Isolation uses a tiny Evenly matched teams weight, so its teams stay even unless that would mean repeating a recent partner.
Rating Isolation, Ladder and Rating Minor Balance all use Similar ratings on court plus Evenly matched teams, which keeps the same players on each court and splits them into more even teams. Evenly matched teams costs a few more repeat opponents on larger rosters, because splitting a court evenly leaves fewer ways to vary who plays whom.
Ladder and Rating Minor Balance keep a little Similar ratings in partnerships (5 and 2). It trims how often a strong player is paired with a much weaker partner (the player who barely gets to hit the ball) without bringing the lopsided teams back. Raise it much further and the lopsided teams return.
Highest Rated Partner Responsibility sets how much the stronger partner is assumed to contribute when the Mixer estimates a team's strength for Evenly matched teams. Its default is your group's Highest Player Responsibility rating setting (Group Settings → Ratings): the same percentage on the same axis, so the mixer starts wherever the ratings side is set. The mixer control is a per-session override of that group default: nudge it for one night's play without touching the group-wide setting. Lower it and the estimate leans toward the weaker partner; 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 Mixer avoids putting two completely unrated teams on the same court, because 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 asked for) over whatever composition falls out naturally. Prefer Mixed Doubles Courts and Prefer Single-Gender Courts are soft preferences: unchecking one tells the Mixer to stop favoring that arrangement, though it will still use it when the roster leaves no other option.
Courts modal
All three Courts Controls default to 0: the Mixer 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 Mixer away from partner and opponent freshness. Bad Court (default: None) marks one court as the undesirable one; the Mixer 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. Note that Sort Courts by Rating (a display option) renumbers courts by rank, which overrides what Court Weight and Bad Court do with physical court numbers; the Mixer pops a "Sort by Rating will override court weights" toast when both are in play. For display options (sorting by rating and its numbering modes, 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 tighter rounds and take longer; lower is faster with slightly looser results. The interface tops out at 40.
| 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 |
| Crossover Weight | 1 | role flips (partner → opponent) bother your group |
| Similar ratings on court | 0 | you want players grouped by level, court by court |
| Evenly matched teams | 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, 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, or use Reset to Defaults at the bottom of Mixing Algorithm (unlike the preset, it also resets Mix Quality).
The courts-header preset badge
A small badge above the courts summarizes the active settings:
| 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, COURT RATING 30) | 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 while mixing offline. |
| 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.
Saved to the group vs kept on this device
Not all settings travel with you.
Saved to the group: signed in and mixing for one of your groups, the mix settings (the preset and every weight: partner, sit-out, ratings balance, gender rules, quality) are saved to the group, not to the device you set them on. Changes save as you make them and take effect on the next mix. Any device, and any co-organizer or sub-organizer running the group, opens the mixer with the settings the group used last. Another device picks up a change the next time it opens the mixer or switches group, not while both are open; if two people change a setting at once, the last change wins. If you've used the mixer before, the group's saved settings start from the first device that opens it with something other than the defaults. With Launcher Settings on, launching from the dashboard or an event page still starts from those, which then become the group's saved settings. Signed out, in the demo, or mixing without a group, these stay on the device as before.
Kept on this device: display preferences stay in this browser only: number of courts available, show/hide rating badges, show/hide consecutive-play badges, repeat counts on history badges, sort courts by rating (and its Numbering mode: highest-rated = Court 1, highest-rated = highest court #, or keep original numbers), court pseudonyms, action-button position, 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.